Yarden Odhar couldn't believe it. He was stuck in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh GX, in the body of a Slifer Red student, without a deck. However, fortune favors the bold, as upon coming to an abandoned well full of discarded cards, he builds himself a deck and bonds with the spirits that inhabit the well. It's time to show Duel Academy just how good these discarded cards really are.
Stacking The Deck
is a Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Self-Insert Fic by 0 Jordinio 0. It's currently the most popular self-insert fanfic in the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fandom as well as the most popular Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fanfic overall.
It can also be read here and here.
Stacking The Deck provides examples of:
- Accent Slip-Up: Happens sometimes with Yarden's Scottish accent when he gets really mad.
- The Ace: Yarden is insanely skilled by the standards of the world of Yu-Gi-Oh GX. With his meta-knowledge of cards from our world alone, he would be pretty terrifying, but the combination of skill and the heart of the cards thanks to his Duel Spirits makes him almost unbeatable. As of Chapter 26, his record is immaculate at 400 wins to zero losses and zero draws. Only Zane, the Dark Magician Girl, the Paradox Brothers, and Dimitri (with Yugi's Deck) have shown some sign of being able to beat him, and every time, it was due to using cards that Yarden didn't know about or that had different effects in this world. All in all, he's too good for almost anyone to have a chance against, and he knows it; the only person on Duel Academy island that he's uncertain about being able to defeat is Jaden Yuki himself.
- Adaptational Badass: Several of the Duelists here have cards unseen in either anime or manga—or with different effects—that make them more dangerous opponents.
- Almost Kiss: In Chapter 23, Alexis is about to give Yarden her First Kiss but he stops her. He says that she only wants to do that due to the emotional upheaval she's feeling from his Info Dump, but is willing to do it for real if she feels the same later. She does in the very next chapter.
- Alternate Universe: The universe Yarden finds himself in is one where Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions happened. As such, there are a lot more cards that Yarden's unfamiliar with that exist. More than that, however: some cards and some aspects of the game itself have changes beyond what he knows. For one major example, Flip Effect monsters have been discontinued, as has Setting monsters face-down as a whole; former Flip monsters now have different mechanics for their effects.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Doubling as a Cliffhanger at the end of Chapter 18, Yarden to Chancellor Sheppard:Yarden: When are you going to let Alexis know that shadow games were being researched at the Abandoned Dorm and that's the reason why her brother disappeared.
- Berserk Button: There are two things that really piss off Yarden: hurting his friends and insulting his cards, especially his Duel Spirits and most especially his ace, Serpent Night Dragon.
- Big "NO!": Dimitri in Chapter 27 after Yarden defeats him, losing his Yugi imitation halfway through.
- Blatant Lies: In Chapter 26:Yarden: I already have the only card in [Yugi's] deck that would be worth checking out.
Dark Magician Girl: (mentally) Aw master, you're making me blush~
Yarden: (mentally) I meant Curse of Dragon.
Dark Magician Girl: (mentally) Sure you did~ - Calling Your Attacks: Yarden christens Serpent Night Dragon's attack "Ebony Flame"...after a moment of floundering for which the dragon teases him.
- Chick Magnet: Yarden is able to have a few dates with Alexis, get the interest of Jasmine, and at least do mutual flirting with Mindy. Not to mention the number of female Duel Spirits who clearly have a thing for him.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Yarden may enjoy watching Alexis, Jasmine, Mindy, and his humanoid female Duel Spirits, but he also understands that they're living people with their own thoughts and desires. As such, aside from teasing, he won't do anything to them if they don't want to.
- When Dreamsprite and Spirit of the Breeze offer Yarden some "relief", he would gladly partake but can't on account it would hurt Unhappy Maiden's feelings.
- Confusion Fu: Yarden's initial deck is made up of whatever cards he could find from the Reject Well. Thanks to his tactics, it works well as an OTK deck despite the fact that there's little synergy between his cards. Also, since it's a mish-mash of cards, no proper counter-strategy or deck can be made to trump it (i.e. using an anti-Dragon deck to fight his dragon cards). However, he later does have to make proper Decks, as his mish-mash deck will have problems against anyone who can stall.
- After making proper Decks, he now switches between them when necessary, making it difficult for anyone to try and create a deck to counter what he'll use, as there's a chance he'll use an entirely new Deck that will render their predetermined strategy useless.
- Culture Clash: Unlike in real life, Duel Monsters is taken much more seriously in the Yu-Gi-Oh world. Chapter 9 explains both via Alexis's inner musings and
Word of God that people won't post strategies and deck builds that they use, meaning every person needs to find out effective plays on their own. As a result, Yarden finds that a lot of people don't know about good combos that are common knowledge in real life.There were so, so many cards, and going through them all, even just narrowing them down to the types that fit her monster-wise, took an absurd amount of time. And nobody sane would be leaving out card combinations for others to take online or something crazy like that. Duel Monsters was a competitive sport after all, and making combinations just to gift them to others was the height of foolishness. You wouldn't want to give your competitors ways to get better than you after all or use your own hard work against you. That was why it was the most common that everyone was tight-lipped about combinations and what cards worked best together. - Curb-Stomp Battle: Yarden wins most of his Duels this way, half because of his Spirits and a half because the metagame he's used to is literally decades ahead of the GX era.
- Taiyou, an Obelisk snob, challenges Yarden in Chapter 2 after the latter returns his trash talk. The Duel ends on the third turn: Yarden soups up his Serpent Night Dragon to wipe out most of Taiyou's Life Points, then finishes him with Ookazi for direct damage, without losing any Life Points himself.
- Mindy and Jasmine in Chapter 3, a two-on-one match. On the first turn, Jasmine plays a solid monster. On the second turn, Yarden plays four powerful monsters and wipes out both of their Life Points.More specifically...
- Zane underestimated Yarden less than most, but he still wound up losing on Yarden's first turn when the latter turned his own strategy of using ludicrously powerful mechanical dragons against him, once again without any damage to himself. Yet Zane still puts up enough of a fight to make Yarden decide that it's time to start properly building his decks.
- Titan mistook Yarden for his target (i.e. Jaden) due to his hair color and red jacket and planned to overwhelm him as he was hired to do. Yarden refuses his challenge, opting instead to apply this trope traditionally: he throws Titan around like a rag doll, breaking his ribs and stealing his Deck along with his Duel Gauntlet, leaving the mercenary to throw up an illusory smog and run away.
- In Chapter 14, Yarden gets so fed up with the Obelisks' taunting that he decides to take on 38 of them at once. He uses Future Fusion to play Five-Headed Dragon, then plays two cards face-down. The two cards in question? Ring of Destruction to destroy Five-Headed Dragon and deal 5,000 damage to all players—who only have 4,000 Life Points each—and Rainbow Life, to change any damage into Life Point recovery. He wins before anyone can take a single turn. Oddly, though, nobody ever accuses him of cheating.
- In Chapter 27, Dimitri—using Yugi's Deck—ends his first turn at the following stats. In his front row, Summoned Skull, Dark Magician, and Dark Magician of Chaos. In his back row, a story-exclusive Continuous Spell that lets him activate Trap Cards from his hand (even with a full back row), Solemn Wishes for a constant Life Point Boost, a Set Spell Card that can potentially destroy everything on his opponent's Field, one Set card, and Mage Power equipped to Dark Magician, doubling his ATK. Three cards in his hand and 5,500 Life Points. And Yarden still wins with an OTK.
- Defeating the Undefeatable:
- Alexis, Jasmine, and Mindy consider Yarden defeating Zane, with an OTK to boot, to be this. Yarden himself didn't think it's impossible, though he admits afterward that it was touch and go for a moment.
- When copycat Duelist Dimitri steals Yugi's Deck, Yarden steps in before Jaden can. Dimitri's first turn builds a nearly insurmountable Field, but it ends the same way as with Zane: Yarden wins with an OTK.
- Didn't See That Coming: Happens whenever Yarden learns that a card has a different effect from the one he remembers from his world.
- For Want Of A Nail: As a result of Yarden interfering with Titan's attack, Alexis is the one who has to Duel the Paradox Brothers in order to avoid expulsion. Thankfully, Yarden asks to be her partner and the two win their duel.
- Gold Digger: Jasmine gives off vibes of this, but it is ultimately justified. She gives her explanation for why she wants to find a rich husband."Call it that if you want, but love and stuff, only goes so far when you're a poor nobody with barely a roof over your head and working day in day out until you're an exhausted mess," Jasmine shrugged back, unashamed herself and what she was looking for, "I want the good life when I've graduated. I want to enjoy all life has to offer, and some no-name Slifer can't give me, or my friends any of that. Got a problem with that Odhar?"
- Graceful Loser:
- Zane calmly accepts his loss to Yarden and the end of his winning streak.
- The Paradox Brothers are initially shocked at their loss, but they praise Yarden and Alexis when they recover.
- Green-Eyed Monster: All the boys (or at least the ones in Obelisk) are jealous of Yarden for being so close with Alexis, Jasmine, and Mindy.
- Inspirational Insult: Zane invokes this by purposefully insulting Yarden so that the latter would give it his all in their duel. After his loss, he explains himself and apologizes.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Yarden. He's crass, rude, and a bit of an admitted asshole who makes it no secret he lusts after Alexis, but he's actually a decent person deep down and one of his reasons for collecting duel spirits is not only to win fame but to also prepare for the coming enemies.
- A Lady on Each Arm: Yarden invokes this by having Jasmine and Mindy hanging off his arms when they and Alexis go to his room. He does this to purposefully piss off all the guys who want the girls' attention. Alexis plays along by riding on Yarden's back.
- Light The Way: Hoshiningen's effect is a natural bane against DARK monsters and a boost to LIGHT monsters just in the regular game. But in Chapter 10, Hoshiningen's spirit, tempered from Alexis's care, uses its powers in the real world to stun Titan as he tries to abduct Alexis. It buys her just enough time to send Yarden an SOS message.
- Magical Incantation: Only for dramatic effect, of course.
- In Chapter 2, Taiyou has the first instance:Taiyou: Dragon born from the deepest of cursed flame, come forth and burn away my enemies! Come, Curse of Dragon!
- Yarden borrows from (plagiarizes) Seto Kaiba and Jack Atlas when he plays his own dragon:Yarden: Dragon, formed form the pitch-black night! Come forth, the darkness of my very soul, Serpent Night Dragon!
- In Chapter 2, Taiyou has the first instance:
- Making a Splash: In Chapter 9, Crowler reveals that whatever soul was previously in Yarden's body ran a Water deck with Levia-Dragon - Daedalus as its ace. Yarden compliments his taste in cards but scorns him for his lack of skill since he barely won his practical Duel with that Deck.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- Alexis is the most beautiful and voluptuous girl in Duel Academy, with tons of boys vying for her affection.
- Alexis' two friends, Jasmine and Mindy, are also not far behind and are considered equal to her in beauty and voluptuous curves.
- Roger's female duel spirits like Dream Sprite, a curvaceous, naked, blue-skinned fairy girl.
- Oh, Crap!: Yarden has this reaction in Chapter 27 after seeing Dimitri's opening move with Yugi's Deck. He gets over it quickly.
- Over-the-Shoulder Carry: Yarden does this to Jasmine and Alexis after he saves them, Mindy, Jaden, and Syrus from the people experimenting on Wheeler.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Yarden seems to enjoy saying "Is that right?" before attacking someone.
- Sarcastic Confession: In Chapter 15, Zane asks where Yarden gets all his muscle and energy, and he truthfully answers that he's fueling up on Duel Monster spirits. Zane shrugs it off until Chapter 27, where he notices more personality than normal from Baby Dragon and Serpent Night Dragon after Yarden's Duel with Dimitri before their images fade, as well as the fact that he used Cyberdark Horn.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Yarden swears a lot when he insults his opponents, which is often. It only gets ramped up when he gets mad.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Thanks to the Duel Spirit that Yarden gave Alexis protecting her and Yarden himself interfering, Titan is spared his canon fate of being dragged to darkness...with the trade-off of being beaten up by an angry Scotsman.
- Super-Empowering: Yarden gives Alexis a Hoshiningen card that he picked up in the Reject Well. The potent spirit within it slowly awakens Alexis's ability to perceive the spirits, which Yarden hopes will make her less impotent and more of the front-line fighter she should be in the coming battles.
- Twofer Token Minority: So far, Yarden is the only character of non-Japanese descent and spiritually from another world to be attending Duel Academia.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Yarden loves going the extra mile in duels, whether it's buffing up one monster's attack to ridiculous amounts, summoning many powerful monsters at once to crush the opponent, or winning with an OTK/FTK.
- Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Whenever the chance presents itself, Yarden makes a habit of appropriating his opponents' cards or tools that they no longer have a usage for.
- Taiyou, the Obelisk snob that Yarden stomped in Chapter 2, threw away his Curse of Dragon card, blaming it for his loss. Yarden sent Serpent Night Dragon to retrieve it and added it to his Deck.
- When Titan tries kidnapping Alexis and stealing her Deck, Yarden retaliates by beating him up and stealing his Deck (Archfiend-based) and his Duel Gauntlet.
- When he defeats Dark Magician Girl, Yarden gets her Magician Girl-based Deck.
- He intends to do this with Nightshroud's Red-Eyes Deck as well.
