Like in the real-life version, There’s a lot of cards and archetypes that players absolutely hate going against, especially since the Speed Duel format makes them more powerful to use in the metagame than what they are in the TCG or allows them to heavily benefit from a Skill.
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Speed Duel
- Relinquished became this as soon as it debuted in the Toon World event. Despite being a Ritual Monster that takes three cards to summon, its ability to absorb enemy monsters more than makes up for it, especially since such unconditional monster removal is rare in the metagame. Even though there are ways around it, is an amazing come-back card that also serves as a win condition in itself. It's also very accessible to most players, since it can only take a few tries against max level Pegasus to get two copies of his signature monster and its Ritual Spell. The first KC Cup event fully solidified its status, as it was easily integrated into most decks, and even with plenty of potentially devastating counters, it was still considered the most powerful card in high-level play. The top deck in the Asia/Oceania region was dedicated entirely to getting out and protecting Relinquished.
- Relinquished once again became a monster of interest after the sudden release of the Thousand Illusion starter deck in late November 2022, giving it most of its support cards (barring Illusionist Faceless Magician and Relinquished Anima) including Thousand-Eyes Restrict and Relinquished Fusion. In addition, Relinquished received its own Skill in Thousand-Eyes Illusion, allowing for far easier summoning of it and its Fusions (and Bickuribox for some reason). However, said Skill is held back by the requirements that you both control Thousand-Eyes Idol and use a Deck (excluding Extra Deck) that contains no monsters other than a total of at least ten Level 1 Spellcaster-Type monsters or monsters with "Relinquished" in their text; however, the interest was short-lived as the plethora of disruption cards now available make Relinquished much more fragile than it was in its heyday.
- Sphere Kuriboh. Available from the very first pack as a UR, it became a competitive necessity due to its primary effect, which discards itself from the hand to prevent a single attack—something that's more than a little annoying to face and almost impossible to prevent. On top of that, its second effect allows the player to banish it from the Graveyard to add it to a Ritual Monster's Tribute... which makes it ideal for use as the only Tribute to summon Relinquished, both cards being Level 1.
- Mai and her "Harpie's Hunting Ground" skill ended up as one. As described on the Game-Breaker page, the deck's powerful Spell/Trap removal and access to 1900 attack beaters such as Sonic Duck, makes it extremely powerful. The deck being easily able to blend with the aforementioned Relinquished and becoming its skill of choice after the Switcheroo nerf didn't help matters. It ended up being the most overused deck in the second Kaiba Cup.
- Harpies have slowly but steadily made their way back to this status. The release of their own dedicated mini-box, Sign of Harpies, as well as special event support, allowed the archetype to finally thrive within the metagame. Unfortunately, after a nerf to their biggest competitors (Darklords and Blue-Eyes, respectively), it soon became apparent that they were one of the few remaining turbo-style decks that could thrive in the slower meta that followed. They boast immense consistency and versatility, with the ability to control the field and bounce opposing monsters back to the opponent's hand as well as acting as a Rank 4 Xyz toolbox (with Number 70: Malevolent Sin being their go-to Xyz Monster because of its banishing effect). Immediately after Onomats were nerfed, they quickly rose to prominence again, being the only deck with enough consistency post-October 2021 banlist to remain in Tier 1. Tellingly, they also have very strong options by default against gatekeeper deck Melodious. Even limiting two of their necessary cards to 2 (Elegant Egotist and Swallow's Nest) did almost nothing to slow the deck down, with Harpies still managing to hold their title as one of the strongest and most prominent decks for a while before the increase in disruption Traps led to them finally falling out of the meta since Harpies simply cannot deal with their Normal Summon being countered.
- Téa/Anzu Burn decks, augmented with the "Duel standby" skill. Téa players would either win on their first 2 turns or squirm around trying to do it. The perceived lack of skill to pilot the decknote and how playing against it could easily ruin a win streak, ended up making it the most hated deck for competitive and casual players alike until it was nerfed.
- Toons became this as soon as Toon Kingdom was released. The Field Spell not only renders Toons effectively impervious to battle, but also renders any cards with targeting effects useless. This meant that once Toon Kingdom was played, Toon Monsters could take advantage of their shared ability to attack your Life Points directly while the opponent could do almost nothing to stop them if they couldn't remove the Field Spell. Such an action often requires specialized counters that weaken the deck's consistency against anything else, so often, the only option players have is to simply hope Toon Kingdom doesn't show up. Because of its solitaire-style Luck-Based Mission gameplay and the aforementioned difficulty in countering it consistently, it had become the most reviled deck in the game at the time it was commonly used.
- Toons would once again see competitive play thanks to Pegasus' new Toonvitation skill, which allows you to Normal Summon any Toon Monster without Tributing at the cost of only being able to Normal or Special Summon monsters that have 0 ATK, monsters that your opponent is the original owner, or Toon monsters, as well as allowing you to add Toon World to your hand from outside of your deck twice per duel. The World of Barian mini-box also gives them the rest of their support cards (barring Toon Cannon Soldier), including Toon Harpie Lady and Toon Black Luster Soldier who both possess powerful backrow removal and card banishing effects, the very potent Comic Hand and Toon Briefcase, and several deck searchers for helping to get Toon Kingdom out on the field much easier, though even with these buffs the game's Power Creep makes the deck much less oppressive than in their heyday.
- Red-Eyes Insight/Zombie decks have become heavily disliked for being promoted and focused on compared to other archetypes, gaining a lot of support cards while having next to no counters and other archetypes had no support. Eventually, Red-Eyes Spirit was put on Limited 2 to give other decks a chance.
- Red-Eyes decks became this again after the release of their structure deck Return of the Red-Eyes, due to two cards: Red-Eyes Fusion and Red-Eyes Slash Dragon. Like Neos Fusion, Red-Eyes Fusion allows you to fuse directly from the deck, and Slash Dragon has the fairly lax requirement of Red-Eyes B. Dragon and a Warrior monster, giving them a lot of deck-building freedom alongside their dedicated support like Gearfried the Red-Eyes Iron Knight. Yes, this includes Neos, and yes, this means people ran Brave Neos and Slash Dragon in the same deck. The card itself is no slouch either, being a 2800 ATK beater (which spends more time at 3000 due to its effect) that's also basically immune to targeting, and even if it dies, it can easily be brought back by Red-Eyes Spirit, which had long since been taken out of Limited 2. Oh, and Red-Eyes Fusion is searchable by Red-Eyes Insight, meaning Red-Eyes Slash Dragon can easily hit the field early. Cue the ladder being flooded by Red-Eyes decks. They ended up flooding the metagame even more after Archfiend Black Skull Dragon and Meteor Black Comet Dragon were introduced in Chaotic Soldiers and Maximum Gustav respectively, two monsters with devastating effects that are hard to counter and can pretty much end the duel as soon as they hit the field and your opponent's Battle Phase starts.
- Cyber Angels immediately took over the ladder as soon as they were released. Though they were Alexis's signature archetype in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, they were actually released in the Arc-V era and buffed accordingly to account for Power Creep. The result was a hyper-consistent deck with searching and card recycling prowess far surpassing any other deck of the time, easily allowing them to get out and reuse Cyber Angel Dakini, a monster with 2700 ATK that could remove an opponent's monster on summon and recycle Ritual cards each turn. In addition, their Ritual Spell, Machine Angel Ritual, also protected them from destruction, making them hard to remove by conventional methods. Konami instantly took note of this and Limited Machine Angel Ritual merely weeks later due to immense fan outcry. However, this did little to stop them, as Machine Angel Absolute Ritual could use monsters from the Graveyard to fulfill its summoning condition and swarm the field. They completely took over the November KC Cup to the point that almost nothing else could compete except for a similarly reviled Ninja deck that abused the 3-Star Demotion skill to get out its boss monsters instantly, in contrast to previous formats. Cyber Angels can also take 2-3 minutes each to complete a single turn due to their long combo chains. Eventually, most of their archetype were taken off of the Limited list (all except Machine Angel Ritual, for various reasons including being too synergistic with Treacherous Trap Hole), but by that point they had already suffered from Power Creep and were no longer as competitively viable as they were during their heyday.
- Sylvans are unbelievably fast (quite ironic as speed wasn't one of the deck's strengths in the TCG when they debuted), their monsters have great stats, and with Rose Lover, they've got enough synergy to mill their heavy hitters (such as Sylvan Hermitree or one of the Flower Princesses), revive lost monsters with Carrotweight Champion, or just pick apart your field piece by piece with multiple Komushroomos or Marshalleafs. Much of the player base refers to them as "Skillvans" because of how easily they can get their combo pieces in the Graveyard to devastate their opponent's field and OTK with minimal input required from its players.
- Lava Golem has become infamous for being the primary win condition of Burn decks. It removes two of the opponent's monsters to Special Summon itself to their side of the field and inflicts 1000 damage to them at the beginning of each of their turns (which is huge in a 4000 LP format). Even though it's a 3000 ATK beater, Burn decks run multiple cards to disable it and other monsters from attacking, all while whittling down the opponent's LP through other means to reduce the amount of turns Lava Golem's controller has to survive. The Golem is also hard to get rid of in decks that don't run Tribute or Ritual Monsters (and even then, they still have to take 1000 damage before they can Tribute it), as Enemy Controller is the only card most decks run that Tribute their own monsters, and that can be countered by the Burn deck player simply not playing any monsters for the opponent to take. Konami eventually gave it an errata that halved its burn damage to 500, and announced that future burn cards (e.g. Gagaga Cowboy) would similarly have their damage halved.
- Woodland Sprite's burn effects were so complained about that almost immediately after it was released, Konami took notice and made an announcement about a nerf. Combining the lower LP total with the Bamboo Sword engine meant Woodland Sprite was so good at dishing out OTKs that it was promptly thrown on Limited 1 and stayed there ever since.
- The 'Fur Hires.' Along with being an inexpensive deck to build (all of the key cards are either Normal or Rare, with only one card being Super-Rare), they took the meta by storm the day they came out, due to their ability to swarm the field with their special summoning effects, which allow them to instantly summon heavy hitters like "Dyna, Hero Fur Hire" and "Wiz, Sage Fur Hire" directly from the hand, with "Beat, Swordsman Fur Hire" even able to search the deck for them. That alone would have put them on par with the Sylvans, but combine their Zerg Rush abilities with the ability to draw monsters out of the graveyard, banish opponents' monsters from their graveyard, negate spells and traps effects, and even instantly destroy cards that are either face up or face down, all simply by utilizing their special abilities, and you have a deck capable of first-turn kills with remarkable consistency. Players were screaming for a nerf practically from day one, especially after the Duel Island - Gladiator event. In August of 2018, Konami obliged, Limiting Dyna, Hero Fur Hire and putting Donpa, Marksman Fur Hire on Limited 2. They took a further step in October of 2018, by putting Wiz, Sage Fur Hire on Limited 2.
- Notably, the deck 'Fur Hire' is often complained to be a deck that should not be on Duel Links already, considering it's a deck released in real life during 2018, making it extremely new and thus has effects that accounts for real life Power Creep (similar to the Cyber Angels entry above), meaning they're very powerful compared to the much older cards in Duel Links, and as newer cards were released, Fur Hire quickly fell by the wayside.
- Treacherous Trap Hole is a prime candidate for the most hated backrow card in the game. Upon activation, it instantly destroys 2 monsters on the field, practically for free. For perspective, you can only have a maximum 3 monsters on your side of the field, which makes it close to a total field clear, and most often, it's used to intercept the opponent's plays so that they will be forced to end their turn with no monsters to defend themselves from a likely One-Turn Kill. Try to evade the card by playing only 1 monster? The opponent can just destroy one of their own monsters to take out yours. Even its supposed limiting condition of requiring no Traps in the Graveyard to activate it is made trivial by the multitude of decks that don't have room for Traps anyway, run Quick-Play Spells as defensive cards instead, or use the Endless Trap Hell skill to empty the Graveyard of Traps. Also, since the minimum deck size is a mere 20 cards, players got used to seeing this card often. Since it can singlehandedly win games on its own and widens the gap between high and low tier decks by discouraging anything that requires building up field presence to make plays (including the widely-anticipated Synchro monsters introduced with the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds update), players have constantly called for it to be placed on the Forbidden / Limited list, speculating that Konami is reluctant to do so in fear of losing trust from players that spent a lot of currency to get a Super Rare Box card. In the October 2018 banlist, Konami finally obliged, adding Treacherous Trap Hole to the Limited 2 list. Then people started requesting to go a step further and for it to be outright banned, simply because any new deck without something on the limited list will gladly run it even at two copies, meaning it will always be a problem barring a total ban. Konami eventually went a step further and put Treacherous Trap Hole on Limited 1 in December 2022.
- Amazoness was initially a weak archetype mostly filled with only beaters. However, they swept the metagame upon the release of their more powerful cards like Amazoness Princess, Queen, and Onslaught are introduced, eventually requiring Konami to hit the deck with the banlist not just once, but twice. Even today they can still somewhat keep up in the current metagame if only through devolving into a stall deck that's usually more Traps like Floodgate Trap Hole than monsters, which didn't help boost their popularity amongst the fanbase in the slightest.
- Elemental HERO Brave Neos, a fusion released from an EX Structure deck, has probably hit this point as well. On his own he isn't that great a card, being a generic beater that gets stronger if Elemental Heroes are in the graveyard, and being able to fetch a card related to Neos when he destroys a monster. The problem is he also came with Neos Fusion, a spell that fuses monsters from the deck, and Brave Neos himself having a requirement of Neos and any effect monster that's level 4 or less. Any monster, mind, meaning it became commonplace to cram Neos and several copies of the fusion spell in any deck that wants to send a monster to the graveyard - which is a lot. People quickly grew sick of Brave Neos showing up in decks he has no business in, as well as the idea you have to run him if you want a generic way to fill up the graveyard. Eventually, Neos Fusion got put on Limited 2 due to this... which barely dented his usage in decks that didn't already have cards on the list, who gladly ran one Neos Fusion and one Treacherous Trap Hole.
- Aleister the Invoker and Invocation. A two card engine that had made everyone sick of seeing him and his Invoked Fusions in many hybrid decks. On the November 2019 KC Cup, the Invoked somehow managed to tier in all three categories: Pure Invoked/Invoked whatever (tier 3), Invoked Vehicroid (Tier 2) and Invoked Elementsaber (Tier 1). Having Sorcery Conduit hasn't made the pain any less easier, as all it takes is one Cosmic Cyclone to trigger the search to get the heavy hits coming. The impact was such that in the December 2019 banlist, Kiteroid got put on Limited 2 alongside Invoked Magellanica, which killed the Invoked Roids variant altogether. And then Invoked Elementsaber got killed when Konami put both Aleister and Elemental Palace on limited 3. That still didn't stop Aleister from causing grief, so eventually Konami dropped the hammer on him by putting Invocation on Limited 3 as well and banning Invoked Cocytus entirely. As of March 2023, Aleister is now officially off the Limited list, meaning that its reign of terror is likely to resurface.
- Staple backrow cards in Duel Links can be this as well. Cards like Floodgate Trap Hole, Drowning Mirror Force, Cosmic Cyclone, Galaxy Cyclone, Lightning Vortex, Karma Cut, Raigeki Break, Paleozoic Canadia, Bottomless Trap Hole, Trap Hole of Spikes, Ballista Squad, Ultimate Providence, Dark Hole, Crackdown, and Warning Point aren't seen as that useful in OCG/TCG even when they first show up, but in Duel Links, they show up at just the right time to make them very popular cards.
- F.A. Hang-On Mach. This little motorcycle becomes an utter nightmare when combined with the skill Level Augmentation. Add it to a deck that uses high-level monsters, such as Blue-Eyes or Darklords, and you now have a free beatstick that is poised to potentially OTK with upwards of a whopping 4200 ATK, is unaffected by monster effects, and causes every one of your opponent's cards to be banished instead of being sent to the GY as if the player had Macro Cosmos on the field. It's synergy with Level Augmentation was so overpowered that the skill had to be nerfed in the May 2021 banlist update.
- Superheavy Samurai decks can be a real pain if you're not prepared to deal with them, with their go-to strategy for winning duels involving getting Stealth Ninja onto the field and then equipping it with Soulshield Wall and Soulhorns to achieve victory in less than two turnsnote . So unless you have something that can stop the attack, you’re gonna lose against them every time.
- Aromages are one of the most hated decks to play against, largely because its playstyle revolves around amassing huge amounts of life points while using it to power up their monsters to ridiculous levels and get opposing monsters off the field without having to attack. As a result, they can be incredibly hard to defend against even with optimal choices unless you have cards that can clean out their backrow before it happens. What's even worse is that half of the archetype's cards can be easily obtained through the Card Trader and the rest through a certain minibox, making it easy to build the deck.
- Lunalights were extremely hated before their key cards to bring out their boss monsters became limited. Their effects made it ridiculously easy to get Fusion materials to bring out Cat and Saber Dancer, who are extremely hard to destroy and can almost effortlessly defeat you in less than two to three turns, and combining it with Yami Yugi's Destiny Draw skill made it almost impossible to score a win against them. It eventually got so bad that Yellow Marten and Emerald Bird, the two monsters responsible for it all, got limited to 3, lessening the usage of Lunalights in PvP greatly. They eventually got the rest of their support upon the release of Celina and the Wild Spirit box, although they aren't nearly as oppressive as they used to be thanks to both Power Creep and restrictions still placed on their key cards.
- Magician Girls are one of the more frustrating decks to deal with, as their members are capable of Special Summoning other monsters when attacked or targeted by card effects, allowing them to swarm the field and pave way for even more powerful monsters while debuffing yours in the process. The worst offender in the archetype being Berry Magician Girl, whose effect activates either way and can pretty much only be stopped by negating its effects. However, you can also shut them down by locking down their Monster Zones to prevent swarming, which only a select few cards and archetypes like Ojamas are capable of. Other than that, duels against them will often end poorly for you.
- Ritual Beast Decks can be extremely frustrating to duel against, primarily because of how their Main Deck monsters can clear your field before attacking and how easy it is to turbo out their powerful Extra Deck monsters via Contact Fusion. Even worse is how said Extra Deck monsters can avoid destruction by returning themselves to the Extra Deck to bring back their Materials to use as defenses. Expect an uphill battle unless you have ways to counter their effects. The April 2022 banlist saw a blow to the deck with Winda (one of their key cards) being Limited to 3.
- Blue-Eyes, much like Red-Eyes before it, has cemented itself as this. After the March 2021 banlist hit. nerfing the hand consistency skill Balance along with almost every known archetype that countered or at the very least gave it an even matchup, both Blue-Eyes and Darklords took the top tier throne and ruled with an iron fist. A large percentage of players use it because of how easy it is to secure a win, as well as acquire due to Konami heavily promoting it. Their immense amount of support (including TWO structure decks, one of which reprinted several key cards for the deck that could previously only be obtained through boxes) make it ridiculously easy to get two to three Blue-Eyes White Dragons on the field in less than two turns, which sets up for DSOD Kaiba to activate his Ultimate Dragons skill and potentially end the game. Its only real weakness compared to other decks is that in some cases, it requires setting up. But if it manages to set itself up well, it can make very powerful disruption plays, effectively crippling and depleting the opponent's resources before finishing them off the next turn. Despite the deck being nerfed later, it still sees very prominent usage in ranked play. While their banlist restrictions were greatly loosened later on, they'd since fallen out of favor due to the meta revolving around decks with better speed and consistency than an archetype whose turn 1 play is often setting The White Stone of Ancients and then passing.
- Blue-Eyes decks saw a resurgence in competitive play in late October 2023 thanks to Deep Emotion giving them Blue-Eyes Abyss Dragon whose effects help make Fusion and Ritual Summoning easier for them, as well as the new skill Blue-Eyes Dimension which allows you to summon Blue-Eyes White Dragon without tributing and gives you access to Polymerization and/or Chaos Form from outside of the deck at the cost of being unable to special summon anything other than LIGHT Dragon monsters with levels or Ritual Monsters, making them even more offense-oriented with difficult combos for the opponent to get around.
- They later saw even more play alongside Dark Magician decks upon the release of their shared Battle Chronicle skillnote , which was made even more powerful with the debut of Ultimate Fusion and Chronicle Magician and Sorceress in the Magician's Chronicle starter deck and Successor Soul in Tachyon of Galaxy. They even received a Normal Monster version of Black Luster Soldier, which combined with Ultimate Fusion makes the otherwise difficult summoning of Dragon Master Knight a breeze. All of these would put Blue-Eyes back on the tier list and a lot of groans from players who were tired of dealing with them the last time they ruled the meta.
- Resonators, much like Harpies, burst onto the scene with a bang after they got their own Jack Atlas-themed mini box. Quickly proving that they could hard counter the previously Tier 1 Harpies, they became the second coming of Blue-Eyes as the premier top tier Dragon deck. Thanks to the newly added skill Demon's Resonance, Resonators boast insane hand consistency, the ability to turbo out Synchro monsters like crazy while gaining obscene amounts of LP (allowing them to abuse traps like Solemn Scolding that can negate virtually anything an opponent tries to do), and OTK potential. All while having a staggering number of tech cards at their disposal such as Doomcaliber Knight and Amano-Iwato to stop effects, Caius the Shadow Monarch for a tribute beatstick and to get rid of a card on the field, and even Obelisk the Tormentor to serve as a threatening non-targetable extra boss monster. They very quickly started taking over the ladder during KCGT preliminaries. After the October 2021 banlist, however, they were sent plummeting into low tier due to being forced to run Red Nova Dragon and the original Red Dragon Archfiend, as one of the main strengths of the deck was being able to turbo out multiple Dark End Dragons, Infernity Doom Dragon, and even Hot Red Dragon Archfiend Bane. The nerf to their skill also resulted in them no longer being able to be used as an engine for Thunder Dragons. Having almost completely disappeared from the ranked ladder and KC Cup, Konami decided to re-buff the deck in a new, interesting way with the July 2022 skill update. Due to the extra deck requirements being generally seen as too restrictive for it to be considered viable, Konami decided to allow the skill to give players access to 1 free copy of Red Rising Dragon every time it's used, as well as lifting the restrictions on requiring Dark or Dragon-related Synchro monsters.
- The combination of Inzektor Exa-Beetle and Digital Bug Rhinosebus quickly began to dominate the tier list after the July 2021 banlist. Exa-Beetle is a Rank 6 Xyz that can can not only steal a monster from the opponent's Graveyard and equip it to itself to gain ATK and DEF, but also detach an Xyz material in order to target 1 card on each player's field and send them directly to the Graveyard. If that wasn't bad enough, Exa-Beetle can be used as material to Xyz summon Rhinosebus, which is a walking Smashing Ground that inflicts piercing damage. The combination of these two cards' effects along with their ease of access compared to the other popular Rank 6 Xyz monster, Photon Strike Bounzer (both are regular Rares in their respective boxes while Bounzer is an Ultra Rare), instantly caused them to become powerful staples in Onomat and Thunder Dragon decks, immediately shooting them to the top of the tier list due to Rhinosebus's ability to act as a devastating turn 1 play. Not to mention, it is possible to run Rhinosebus with the aforementioned Bounzer to create a nigh-unbeatable lockdown without specific cards like Book of Moon or Forbidden Chalice. For Onomats in particular, the Exa-Beetle into Rhinosebus combo ended up making it Tier 0, as the deck is already an extremely versatile toolbox with options for any situation. It got so bad that Rhinosebus received an emergency nerf, being limited to 2.
- Onomats. Boasting one of the largest toolboxes in the entire game, the deck practically has an option for every situation one could think of. Not to mention, they have their own consistency skill in Onomatoplay, which practically allows them to get an impactful play within their first turn 99% of the time. Since their debut, even after receiving multiple consecutive nerfs, they have remained a powerful contender due to their sheer versatility, thriving even in metas where they weren't considered as good as the most top tier decks of those times. They were so dominant for such a long time that they received one of the hardest hits out of all the long-time dominant decks in the game's history. Their main consistency skill was destroyed in the October 2021 banlist, to such an extent that it effectively killed the entire deck, sending it plummeting down into rogue territory from Tier 1.
- Book of Moon. Already one of the most infamous cards in the history of the TCG and OCG, once it was added to the game it very quickly became almost mandatory to run 3 copies of it in every deck that could, just to give them a competitive edge and grant unparalleled disruption power. Worse, it can be used in conjunction with the aforementioned Treacherous Trap Hole for devastating effect. Even worse, it's a Selection Box UR that was not reprinted until Chaotic Soldiers, meaning unless players paid top dollar multiple times to get 3 copies, they were inherently at a disadvantage competitively. Out of all cards that have debuted in a Selection Box, this one is widely considered to be the most pay-to-win card ever released.
- With the release of the ARC-V world, Melodious received a slew of new support that quickly pushed it to one of the best decks in the meta following the October 2021 banlist. They not only boast a slew of powerful Fusion boss monsters, but they also boast a variety of ways to summon them and put pressure on their opponents. One of these bosses, Bloom Diva the Melodious Choir, is a gatekeeper card similar to Invoked Cocytus that many decks simply just cannot deal with, as it cannot be destroyed by any means and any Special Summoned monsters it battles with are destroyed while the difference in their ATK is dealt to the opponent as damage. Not helping the problem is the fact that Zuzu's initial skill lets you start the duel with one in your Extra Deck, so people don't even need to get it from Pendulum Genesis, although most Melodious players prefer to get it from the box so they can run "From Songstress to Maestra" skill instead, which greatly boost the speed and consistency of the deck.
- Melodius isn’t the powerhouse it used to be, since there are many ways of neutralizing monsters that bypass Bloom Diva’s protections.
- Destiny HEROes returned to the metagame with a bang after gaining not only some core support in the Idea of Armageddon minibox, but also a brand-new skill for Aster Phoenix called "Clock of Destiny" that makes use of said new support - namely Clock Tower Prison and Destiny HERO Dreadmaster. Similarly to Harpies, the deck boasts great consistency and a massive assortment of tech cards at its disposal, much of which can be used to disrupt the opponent during their turn while setting themselves up for a variety of OTK strategies to get around hand traps and skills such as Destiny Draw. It also turns out they are one of the few decks that have an advantageous matchup against Harpies.
- Soon after Meklord Astro Dragon Triskelion was released, it turned out that this, plus the Meklord Refinement skill and access to a plethora of powerful tech cards, was enough to catapult Meklords from low tier into top tier status. Though they have been steadily dipping downward into the lower echelons of the top tiers, they have still been proven to be quite strong. Needless to say, many were quite surprised by their sudden and unexpected turn in terms of tier status. The skill factors greatly into their strategy by allowing them to discard any Meklord Army monster they do not need in order to instantly get access to a Meklord Assembly, which can guarantee them either an Obligato, Wisel, Triskelion, or a Boon of the Meklord Emperor (The Meklords' archetypal Pot of Greed). Obligato grants them access to a myriad of powerful turn 1 plays, irrelevant of whether or not Wisel is in their hand, allowing them to easily set up a strong backrow right out of the gate as well as potentially lock down the opponent from playing any Spells if they manage to summon Wisel onto the field. Even their focus on fighting Synchros ended up being relevant as one of their main competitors just happened to be the Synchro-based Rose Dragons. The launch of VRAINS World gave them not only a huge nerf to their Skill, but also nerfed the decks they countered, leaving them without a niche once again and sending them back into rogue territory.
- Magnets have gradually achieved this status in the metagame due to their playstyle quickly allowing them to summon their boss monsters that can sweep your field and deal huge damage, as well as their Field Spell allowing them to return opposing monsters to the hand. All of this in addition to other factors have been what allowed them to stay prominent alongside decks like Harpies for a long time, which garners hate from players due to many people, especially in the higher PvP ranks, using them.
- Many hand trapsnote in the game are especially loathed, most infamously because a percentage of the player base likes to use them alongside staple Trap Cards to construct stall decks that are annoying to play against unless you have ways to deal with them. The most notable ones are Kiteroidnote , Battlin' Boxer Veilnote , Arcana Force XIV – Temperancenote , Wightprincess note , and the aforementioned Sphere Kuriboh. While some of them have ended up becoming limited to 2 or 3, it doesn't stop them from being prevalent in the metagame regardless of whether or not they're actually compatible with the decks they're in.
- Thanks to Gandora the Dragon of Destruction getting its own minibox in addition to a new skill, a new deck involving its retrained version Gigarays Gandora, hand traps, and the Gadget engine surfaced that quickly cemented itself as a very sacky, very annoying strategy, essentially being the second coming of Thunder Dragons due to its ability to also run Levianeer as well as consisting mostly of hand traps and floaters. Once it gets itself set up through stalling and use of the skill to get 3 Gandora monsters with different names into the Graveyard, Gigarays Gandora is summoned and at the cost of half your LP banishes everything other than itself from the field and both players' Graveyards, gaining ATK for every banished card. Usually, this is enough to push it WAY over the limit in order to attack for game. The only real outs to it are to either pray that it bricks so that the Gandora player can hopefully be beaten in time, or you have something that can negate Gigarays's effect. Neither of those is a likely outcome, as the latter can simply be baited by the Gandora player and the former is a rare occurrence due to the skill granting hand consistency and the deck having not only a reliable engine at its disposal, but also the ability to stall effectively. Fortunately, the April 2022 banlist relieves this somewhat by Limiting the original Gandora to 1 (preventing synergy with The Melody of Awakening Dragon and Monster Reborn) and Megaroid City to 2 (which was used to search Kiteroid, one of the aforementioned hand traps). With Gandora coming off the Limited list in March 2023, players are very likely going to be dealing with a second coming of the nonsense and frustration the deck brings with it.
- Burning Abyss, once a seldom-used rogue deck which was seen as having potential in the future, quickly proved that potential once they got access to Beatrice, Lady of the Eternal
in the Heart of Xyz minibox. This single card managed to skyrocket them to Tier 1, and not in a likable way. The deck boasts a very annoying, very potent grind game that slows matches down to a crawl and forces the opponent to play around them lest they succumb to their multitude of successive effects. The worst part by far is that they are often used in conjunction with Sera and Aigami's skill "Mind of the Plana" which capitalizes off of the deck's ability to banish the opponent's cards by deleting the opponent's banished pile from existence. Make one mistake, say goodbye to all of your key cards as they disappear forever before you are finished off by Beatrice and/or Dante. Even worse, just like in the real-life game, Phantom Knights can also be run in conjunction with them, making an already-solid deck even deadlier. - Thanks to its recently-released Pendulum support and buffs to Declan's skill Command of the Doom King, D/D/D ended up achieving this status as well. They are a powerful gatekeeper deck that only really struggles against the aforementioned Burning Abyss. They can turbo out multiple Level and Rank 8 monsters with absurd consistency, and they have a powerful turn 1 thanks to Coach King Giantrainer, which not only sets up for the next turn but can burn the opponent for every monster drawn using the effect, and since it's made turn 1 its negative side effect of not being able to conduct the Battle Phase is meaningless. The addition of Extra Monster Zone boost their playability further, as now they have one additional zone they can use via Pendulum Summon or Fusion Summon. They've since racked up a slew of banlist hits and a nerf to Command of the Doom King to keep them out of the top tiers, but are still decently competitive.
- Galaxy decks are a fairly common sight due to the ludicrous playmaking ability of Kite's Xyz Galaxy skill, which basically gives you a free Foolish Burial right from the get-go to summon giant beaters by repeatedly reviving Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon and using it for Rank 8 Xyz monsters like Neo Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon, Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Blade Dragon, and Galaxy-Eyes Full Armor Photon Dragon (the latter two of which also pack potent removal effects and can be summoned one after the other by using making Full Armor, using its effect to pop a card, and then using Full Armor to summon Cipher Blade and then destroying another card), often putting enough damage on board to outright OTK. While not broken due to the deck having no protection against card effects and thus being vulnerable to any sort of disruption or removal, it nonetheless reached this status due to being a very simple and linear gatekeeper deck, and duels involving them go one of two ways: either you have the tools to stall them out and deal with their parade of beatsticks, or one of their monsters slips through the cracks and kills you in one hit. Even worse is that the Skill grants access to Number 90: Galaxy-Eyes Photon Lord, a stupidly powerful Xyz Monster with the ability to both negate effects during either player's turn and can either search your deck or reload Xyz Materials during the opponent's turn. If the dragons don't get you, the lord will. As of late, the toxicity of the deck and its Skill has garnered so much hatred that many have been demanding for months that Konami give either one or both of them some kind of nerf. After dodging several banlists to the fans' annoyance, Galaxy was finally taken down a notch with Xyz Galaxy getting a cutting nerf in March 2023 (it now gives Neo Galaxy-Eyes instead of Photon Lord, which is both much harder to bring out without the skill itself and has much less utility, and its second effect only allows the player to summon Neo Galaxy-Eyes using one material). Even with none of their cards being hit, this one nerf proved utterly back-breaking to the deck, dropping it out of the meta entirely since their viability was wholly based on Xyz Galaxy's play-making power.
- Rose Dragons have been shaping up to be a very oppressive deck that boasts some of the most absurd consistency in the game, the likes of which have not been seen since Onomats were Tier 0. Their skill, Spell of Roses, instantly allows them to send a Rose Dragon card or Witch of the Black Rose from the hand to the Graveyard, then add another Rose Dragon card from their deck to their hand. This usually ends up being Roxrose Dragon, which searches for Basal Rose Shoot, which also revives a Rose Dragon monster from the Graveyard in order to go into a free Level 7 Synchro, of which the deck's Extra Deck is a veritable toolbox for. Going first, they can summon Yazi, Evil of the Yang Zing, which is a giant beatstick that cannot be targeted whatsoever, serving as a wall that is difficult for many decks to overcome. Going second, they can utilize Black Rose Dragon in conjunction with its evolved form Ruddy Rose Dragon to wipe the field, banish both players' Graveyards, and end with a 3000+ ATK beatstick on the board. Setting Basal Rose Shoot before Synchro Summoning Black Rose Dragon allows Black Rose to be brought back after being destroyed, while White Rose Dragon can send World Carrotweight Champion from the Deck to the Graveyard, which can be Special Summoned from there by sending a Plant to the Graveyard. Both monsters can then attack for game assuming no interruptions in the hand. And then to make matters even worse, Rose Dragons now also get access to Trishula, Zero Dragon of the Ice Barrier with the Stars of Synchro mini box, allowing them to banish 3 cards the opponent controls and granting them a free beatstick. With the sudden nerfs to HERO decks, their only consistent counter, in addition to the Extra Monster Zone, it's theorized that the deck is now poised to become the sole Tier 0 deck by the time VRAINS World is launched (while Rose Dragons also got hit by the banlist with Roxrose being put to Limited 2, HEROes having Liquid Soldier being put on the same status is a much more significant hit since they already have other cards on the list). The nerf to the deck's main Skill, however, in addition to the rise of Salamangreats, ended up torpedoing the deck clean off the top of tier lists as soon as the VRAINS World banlist hit. However, they may be on their way to climbing back up due to Roxrose coming off the Limited list in March 2023.
- HEROes in general ended up becoming this over the course of 2022. Not only was there a GX-themed event that brought new skills for all 3 versions of Jaden, but they also got their own box full of new support, Shining Sunrise, which gave them access to 2 key cards used in the full-powered version of the deck in TCG and OCG - Elemental HERO Liquid Soldier and Elemental HERO Sunrise. These buffs ended up pushing HERO decks into becoming one of the most versatile and pwoerful decks in the metagame, with them being considered as virtually the only consistent counter to the other popular meta deck, Rose Dragons. The two most common builds involve the traditional TCG and OCG style of OTK HERO involving the Vision HERO package (Faris, Increase, and Vyon), and a slower, more grind-oriented Elemental HERO build which uses the Neos Fusion package (Neos Fusion and Brave Neos, with this version also being able to include Grand Neos and Neos Knight) and 30 cards, half of which are powerful backrow techs. They became so prominent that they ended up taking a small, but critical banlist hit with the limitation of Liquid Soldier to 2. Now, they must choose between which consistency package they want to run - their tried and true engines, or Liquid Soldier.
- Salamangreats, just like in the real life game, quickly took the meta by storm almost immediately after the launch of VRAINS world. They're fairly F2P friendly to make, with most of their key cards being either Rares in the Link Revolution box or farmable via dueling or leveling up Soulburner. Gameplay-wise, they are able to consistently dump their resources into the Graveyard in order to begin generating card advantage through Link Summoning spam, as well as being able to easily recycle those resources back into the deck/hand allowing them to repeat the process ad infinitum and slowly grind their opponents to their eventual defeat. With the nerfs to Rose Dragons and HEROes, Salads have more than proven themselves as strong counters to both former top tier decks. After roughly 2 weeks of dominance since the launch of VRAINS world, they even proved themselves the be the first Tier 0 deck of the new Link Summoning format. Simply put, Salamangreats have no real counters, except themselves. That's right: the only thing that can counter them is a Salamangreat build designed specifically to counter the opponent's own Salamangreat deck. Meaning a build designed around Graveyard hate, either through the use of Necrovalley and D.D. Crow or with skills like Sealed Tombs. No other deck in the game at the time of their release has been able to outpace them, let alone stop their strategy from working. It's a deck that can effectively be played the exact same way as in the real life game, and it's just as good as the real thing too, if not better due to the Speed Duel format and the lack of available options to oppose it. Sure enough, they became the #1 most used deck in the November 2022 KC Cup, including hybrid builds with archetypes like Mekk-Knights. Immediately after the end of the event, Konami showed no mercy, putting every single important Salamangreat card on the Limited List in some form, dealing a significant blow to their consistency. As of March 2023, Balelynx has now been put on Limited 2, further hampering the strength of Salamangreats in PvP.
- Synchrons were mostly a rogue deck prior to and after the debut of Yusei’s Shooting Star Road Skill, which allowed them easy access to Shooting Star Dragon and made them more prevalent in the metagame. However, the Skill was made even more powerful upon the release of Stardust Warrior in Stars of Synchro, an arguably stronger (and more frustrating) boss monster that is summoned the same way as Shooting Star and can both shut down Special Summons and immediately turbo out another Warrior Synchro Monster from your Extra Deck without it needing to be Synchro Summoned the traditional way when destroyed, giving players yet another hurdle to overcome when playing against Synchron users. The addition of the Extra Monster Zone and an 8th Extra Deck slot for Link Summons only served to strengthen Synchro-related decks further, including Synchrons, giving them more room to turbo out their boss monsters. The final straw for Synchrons was the addition of Synchro Overtake and Yusei's A Bond Illuminates the Future skill, allowing them to Synchro spam even harder and use the skill to convert a modest board into two Signer Dragons, which led to them having a very strong showing in the April 2023 KC Cup and Konami subsequently gutting the deck in the very next banlist, putting Jet Synchron and Tuning on Limited 3 and both Tatsunoko and Ravenous Crocodragon Archethys on Limited 1.
- Infernities, like Synchrons, got a heavy buff with the Stars of Synchro mini box, giving them access to new support such as Infernity Sage and Infernity Suppression. The biggest buff to them, however, was the Extra Monster Zone being added. With this single addition, Infernities are now able to make the equivalent of Turn 1 Onomat boards before the Onomatoplay nerf, having the Bounzer + Rhinosebus combo in addition to other Synchro bosses like Infernity Doom Archfiend and Red Wyvern. Further Link support, as well as the addition of Garbage Lord, also allowed for the creation of a somewhat riskier, but even more powerful build that utilizes Kalin's skill Fleeting Hand, granting the player access to even stronger boards and boss monsters. Infernities would finally see a major blow to their consistency in March 2023 after Infernity Launcher was made Limited 1 on the banlist.
- Dark Magician, in a manner identical to its eternal rival Blue-Eyes, saw itself becoming this thanks to its immense support making it one of the easiest decks to secure wins with and acquire due to heavy promotion by Konami. Said support consists of stupidly powerful cards like Dark Magical Circle, Magician's Navigation, Eternal Soul, and Apprentice Illusion Magician, all of which allow for the churning out of several copies of Dark Magician and mass-banishment of your monsters. Even worse is the releasing of their Xyz boss monsters like Ebon Illusion Magician and Ebon High Magician, both of which only serve to increase the potency of the deck's swarming and banishing capabilities, with the former almost rivalling that of Blue-Eyes decks. Unless you have ways of neutering their effects, you’re pretty much screwed. They saw an increase in usage in PvP in March 2023 when they received a massive boost to their consistency and power upon the release of the Magician's Magic skillnote and the Secret of Magicians structure deck, which includes a copy of Dark Magical Circle and the debut of Magical Dimension, Piercing the Darkness, Secrets of Dark Magic, and a new boss monster in The Dark Magicians.
- The deck wound up seeing even more play alongside Blue-Eyes decks upon the release of their shared Battle Chronicle skillnote as well as powerful support like Chronicle Magician and Sorceress in the Magician's Chronicle starter deck and Successor Soul in Tachyon of Galaxy. This would only end up making their moves even harder to counter and the deck becoming more prominent in PvP.
- Odd-Eyes started out on the lower end of the spectrum when Pendulums were first introduced in the Arc-V world launch, but after a few months of continued support (most notably the skill Xiangke and Xiangsheng, which allows them to instantly set up their Pendulum Scales with just one Odd-Eyes monster in hand, and being a skill means you cannot stop them from setting up and Pendulum Summoning even with backrow removal Set) they finally started to show promise as a viable and very powerful deck. It not only boasts mass summoning power thanks to Pendulum Summoning, but it also has a wide variety of strategies at its disposal. Through the use of Odd-Eyes Arc Pendulum Dragon, they can utilize an infinite summoning loop to constantly resummon their bosses as much as they want. Alternatively, they can also go for summoning powerful Extra Deck bosses through the use of Rank 4 and 7 toolboxes, as well as simply keep their mass amount of monsters on the field to go for a beatdown strategy. The deck would later receive another boost thanks to the release of Odd-Eyes Raging Dragon, a new boss monster that is capable of clearing the opponent's entire field and gains 200 ATK for each card destroyed this way. Even worse is it being able to be summoned easier through Yuya and Yuto's new skill Raging Pendulum, which can add Performapal, Magician Pendulum monsters, and/or Odd-Eyes monsters from the Deck to the hand, place Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon and a Magician Pendulum monster from your hand or Deck to the Extra Deck, and treat Xyz Monsters as Level 7 monsters when Xyz Summoning Odd-Eyes Raging Dragon. All of this allowed Odd-Eyes decks to once again flood and dominate the metagame within a matter of days.
- Infernoids are a fairly decent rogue deck in the main game, but in the Speed Duel format of Duel Links they have proven to be not only very powerful, but also very annoying to deal with for most decks. They function by sending others of their archetype to the Graveyard or banishing them to special summon them. Once on the field, they have powerful board-breaking and negation effects that involve banishing themselves, allowing them to effectively dodge and say "no" to anything their opponents try, making them a very effective stall deck. Worse, they can be combined with multiple other archetypes, including the already-annoying Burning Abyss which is yet another stall deck. Infernoids would see a blow to their power after Void Vanishment was made Limited 2 on the March 2023 banlist, which didn't slow them down much and resulted in Void Feast joining Vanishment on Limited 2 to curb their excessive swarming.
- Mekk-Knights had already proven themselves to be a very strong deck upon their release, but the nerfing of Salamangreats, the only deck that had been keeping them in check, instantly shot them up to Tier 1. Even after they themselves had gotten hit with a nerf, they have still proven to be incredibly consistent, and can make use of a variety of different skills and even builds, as they are also a very splashable engine in many different decks. Pure Mekk-Knights, however, are easily the strongest due to their ability to run Surprise Present, a skill from Tea Gardner that effectively allows the player to clog up an opponent's backrow space with a useless card like Assault Mode Activate. Normally this would be seen as pointless, but not in Mekk-Knights, because they rely on the often-overlooked column mechanic and can use that backrow as a buffer to start their gameplan, which is to Special Summon a bunch of high-level, high-power bosses that generate huge card advantage, Link into their main boss monster Mekk-Knight of the Morning Star, and use its effect to grab World Legacy's Secret from the deck, a card that when activated on the opponent's turn acts as an archetypal Skill Drain, negating any and all of the opponent's monster effects as long as a Mekk-Knight exists within the same column as that monster. Pre-nerf, it was also possible to get World Legacy Whispers, which is the Mekk-Knights' version of Imperial Order and locked out spells. Combined with Secrets, this effectively locked the opponent out of playing the game. The fact that Surprise Present, of all skills, had to be nerfed because of Mekk-Knights speaks volumes about their power. The March 2023 banlist finally dealt with the deck by making Mekk-Knight Blue Sky and World Legacy's Memory limited to 3, cutting into their consistency; when that wasn't enough, it was followed up in April by Mekk-Knight Purple Nightfall also being thrown into Limited 3, killing their hybrid builds and severely crippling the deck itself.
- The addition of Knightmare Corruptor Iblee to the game through the main box Future Circuit means it's now possible to perform the dreaded "Iblee lock" that once plagued TCG/OCG. This lock single-handedly renders any deck that doesn't or can't make use of Link Summoning invalid, as Iblee disables any and all Special Summoning mechanics that aren't Link Summons for her controller while she's on the field, and she just so happens to have another effect that summons herself to the opponent's side of the field when she goes to the Graveyard (usually after being used as fodder for a Link 1, such as Link Disciple or her archetypal Link 1, Knightmare Mermaid). It also just so happens that she has very good synergy with Mekk-Knights, who can use the aforementioned World Legacy's Secret alongside her own effect to prevent the opponent from playing the game.
- Gaia decks have a tendency to be this in spite of their rogue deck status, the reason being because of their infamous gatekeeper tactic involving the combination of Galloping Gaianote and Gaia the Magical Knight of Dragons note to completely lock down the opponent's plays and stop them from countering your attacks. Not helping is their signature Skill The Dragon Knight's Path, which allows the user to immediately play Galloping Gaia from the Deck and help to turbo out Gaia the Magical Knight of Dragons on the first turn, giving players even more hell if they are unfortunate enough to end up going second against them. It can be extremely difficult to get over unless you come packing cards that can shut down their effects.
- Tellarknights managed to reach this status in February 2022 upon the release of the Tellarknight Advent structure deck, which included a copy of Stellarknight Triverr whose ability can bounce all cards on the field back to their owner’s hands upon being summoned, makes the opponent discard cards from their hand, and can revive another Tellarknight monster from your Graveyard when sent there with an Xyz Material attached to it. This, alongside the equally powerful Stellarnova Alphanote the Destiny Draw Skill, and very often a buttload of stall Traps like Fiendish Chain and Floodgate Trap Hole, allowed for powerful disruption plays that can be hard for the opponent to prevent, causing the prominence of Tellarknights in PvP to skyrocket.
- Fire Kings have proven themselves to be a considerably powerful and difficult deck to deal with thanks to the Speed Duel format giving them a huge boost to their consistency, with their usual strategy being using the effects of Fire King Island, Avatar Baron, and/or Avatar Arvata to quickly bring out High Avatar Garunix to obliterate the opponent’s field and end the duel in an instant. Not helping the situation is the archetype's gimmick of destroying cards in their owner's hand and on the field allowing for great synergy with the Yubel series, it combined with numerous hand traps giving Fire King decks access to way more offensive and stall tactics unless you have ways of banishing them or negating their effects.
- Goukis originally debuted in the Flames of the Heart mini-box back in May 2020, and never saw much competitive play due to lacking many of their necessary cards. However, when they got the rest of their support, including their boss monsters in Future Circuit about a month after the VRAINS world was released, they ended up taking Duel Links by storm with their aggressive beatdown strategies, with their most favored tactic being to swarm the field to bring out Gouki the Master Ogre and equipping it with Gouki Finishing move to negate opposing monsters’ effects and deliver a One-Hit KO of over 6800 ATK. A very difficult monster to overcome unless you come packing powerful disruption cards. As of March 2023 however, Gouki Suprex, Gouki Re-Match, and Gouki Finishing Move (the former two being its primary swarming tools, the latter being its finisher) have become Limited 3, greatly reducing the power of Goukis in PvP.
- As of Raider's Requiem, Phantom Knights by themselves are shaping up to be this for two reasons. The first is thanks to Yuto and Yuya’s new skill, Treason Phantom, which can dump a Phantom Knight monster from your deck into your graveyard, allows all Phantom Knight monsters to be treated as Level 4 when Xyz Summoning Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon, and allows you to remove two Xyz Materials from Dark Rebellion to increase its ATK by 500 for each one until the end of the turn. The second reason is the slew of new Phantom Knight support, including Stained Greaves, The Phantom Knights' Rank-Up-Magic Launch, and Dark Requiem Xyz Dragon, the last one being able to absorb all of the targeted monster’s ATK, can negate monster effects and then Special Summon an Xyz Monster from the graveyard after doing so. The skill has already garnered much hatred from the fanbase, who accuse it of basically being a reincarnation of Galaxy Xyz because of it increasing the consistency of Phantom Knights to absurd levels when the deck was already strong enough to compete with the rest of the metagame since their debut (notably, the Skill was released right on the heels of Phantom Knights being completely freed from the Limited list, so it was giving a shot in the arm to a deck that was already at full power). However, they would soon drop out of the top tiers due to a slap on the wrist nerf to Treason Phantom, paired with the advent of Orcusts (which did basically everything Phantom Knights did but on crack, and everything people teched to try and counter Orcusts also countered Phantom Knights).
- Timelords. Already a controversial archetype amongst the fanbase long before their debut in late March 2023. Many players dreaded their eventual arrival because of their gimmick of being immune to destruction by battle (and card effects if Infinite Light is on the field) and their owner not taking any damage if they battle, as well as effects such as halving the opponent's life points if they battle and inflicting damage equal to the ATK of opposing monsters. Even worse is that most of their members can be easily obtainable by levelling up Z-One, making them easy to build. All of this would add Timelords to the long list of convenient stall decks, with the only ways around them being non-targeting effects, banishing, or attacking directly. These factors make them one of the premier gatekeeper decks in the game - they have enough counters to make them barely a threat in higher ranks, but most of those outs are locked away in Boxes, making them an almost-guaranteed loss for players with less developed collections.
- Orcusts. Thanks to the release of their boss monsters in the Solflare Lightning box, Orcusts effectively became the 2nd coming of Mekk-Knights, functioning as both a powerful deck on their own that can be used with multiple skills, as well as a highly splashable engine that can be placed seamlessly into multiple different other archetypes. The likes of Crystal Beasts and even Onomats can make use of their powerful Graveyard effects to pump out Xyz and Link summons like crazy, usually ending on boards consisting of Dingirsu, Longirsu, and/or Galatea. Even their strongest Link Monster, Orcustrion, which is not usually seen in real life builds of the deck, sees a place in the deck as an extra boss. One of the main causes for this was the fact that the centerpiece of their full combo, Knightmare Mermaid, was for the longest time a Limited 1 card. However, even at just Limit 1, it proved that it was just as broken as it is in the real life game, to the point where after the Worlds Qualifiers ended, a ban on it was deemed necessary. Their immense presence in Worlds effectively cemented themselves as another dreaded Tier 0 deck, as the majority of decks used during that format were either pure or hybrid Orcust decks.
- After Orcusts were hit by the banlist in August 2023, they quickly found a new best friend: Gandora. Because Gandora had its restrictions removed a short time ago and Gigarays Gandora greatly benefitted the Orcust playstyle by ditching their monsters to the Graveyard and providing Link Material, Orcust easily circumvented the nerfs and continued to run roughshod over the meta while bringing an older annoying deck back into the spotlight.
- While they never saw much if any play during the time of their debut, the release of Yugo and the Wings of Clearness mini-box caused Speedroids to rocket to the top of the metagame in almost no time. The mini-box offers Clear and Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, two of their strongest boss monsters with powerful negation effects, as well as cards to improve consistency like Taketomborg and (while not a Speedroid monster) Winda the Wind Charmer. Meanwhile, Yugo’s event allowed players to obtain Hi-Speedroid Kitedrake, another powerful boss monster capable of nuking the entire field, while Yugo’s level up rewards give Terrortop and Fuki-Modoshi Piper that help to further boost consistency. Add onto that the effects of Clear Wing Acceleration note and Speedroids would become one of the most reviled decks in the current metagame. Even Double Yoyo getting put on Limited 2 didn't do much to slow them down, as players found just as effective workarounds. This caused them to get hit by the banlist again, putting Fuki-Mudoshi Piper at Limited 2 and hampering their consistency even further. Their continued dominance post-nerf resulted in Konami eventually hitting Yugo's skill, killing it off in a similar way to how Xyz Galaxy was killed off, finally dethroning Speedroids and sending them plummeting all the way down into rogue tier.
- With the release of the new skill The Soul of Light and Darkness, Black Luster Soldier has finally managed to break its longstanding streak of being constantly promoted, yet perpetually a rogue deck. This skill automatically starts the duel with 7 cards in the user's Graveyard: 6 monsters for use as fodder for Ritual Summons and banish material for Envoy of the Beginning, as well as a copy of Super Soldier Ritual. Then, once BLS itself is on the field, it can reshuffle 3 banished cards back into the Graveyard, then set any Ritual Spell from the deck to the field. This allows the deck to turbo out copies and variants of Black Luster Soldier at will, all while also incorporating multiple tech cards and engines for draw power, Link Summoning, and even adding more material for summoning BLS such as Magistus and even Trickstars.
- Tenyi is easy to play and easy to build, due to their cards all coming from a single Mini Box, while being very tough to crack. Their Main Deck monsters can Special Summon themselves easily to enable easy Link climbing while also being very resilient against disruption. They also have incredible consistency with cards like Ashuna and Vessel for the Dragon Cycle and have great resilience thanks to their Level 4 monsters being able to use powerful defensive effects by banishing themselves from the Graveyard and the skill Three Effects! bringing them up to 7000 LP as soon as they put Berserker on the field - almost twice as much as most other decks. Even after Three Effects! was nerfed, it was promptly replaced by The Legend of the Heroes, which gives more LP than the nerfed Three Effects! while also letting the deck recycle almost their entire Extra Deck once per Duel. The December 2023 banlist only made things worse as Konami elected to fire a full salvo against Black Luster Soldier, their main competitor, while only giving Tenyi a light slap on the wrist by putting Vessel to 2, which meant very little for a deck that rarely ran any Limited 2 cards to begin with.
- Neos/Yubel ended up shooting in power thanks to Jaden and Yubel's new skill Eternal Bond, which for the nonexistent cost of only being able to Special Summon Neos, Yubel and Elemental HERO monsters, allows you to Normal Summon Yubel and Neos without Tribute and to evolve Yubel to its final form for free by playing its higher forms from outside your deck. This allows for easy Graveyard setup, and instantly gets you a Level 12 on the field that reflects any damage from an attack and destroys the attacking monster, and the damage is not nerfed by half due to being released before that policy was applied. The skill doesn't end there, as whenever either of the two are summoned you can either search Elemental HERO Neos or Super Polymerization or add a Miracle Contact from outside your deck to your hand. This is ridiculous consistency for a deck as you can easily summon Elemental HERO Neos Kluger through Miracle Contact or Neos Fusion, a 3000 ATK beater that burns the opponent for half their monster ATK whenever it battles one (and keep in mind this is done before damage calculation, so there's almost no safe way of beating over this thing) and floats into Neos Wiseman, another 3000 ATK beater that burns the opponent even harder since it was also released before the burn nerfs and gains a chunk of LP on top of that. To top it off, Super Polymerization easily allows you to get rid of an annoying monster thanks to the various HERO fusion monsters that have generic material (often Escuriado and The Shining). All of this resulted in Neos/Yubel players being easily able to swarm the field with powerful monsters (many of them with ludicrous burn damage for a 4000 LP format) with a small and consistent deck, which got even worse when Neos Fusion got unlimited, thus allowing it to run either staple Traps or multiple copies of Neos Kluger while vastly improving consistency by making it far less reliant on hard-drawing Yubel to make plays.
- Galaxy-Eyes returned with a vengeance in a new way thanks to the addition of Mizar, who uses a build focused solely on Number 107: Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon. Mizar's skill Tachyon Dragon Domination allows him to, once per turn and twice per duel, either reveal a Level 8 monster in his hand to get a Level 4 or 8 LIGHT-attribute monster into his hand and then Set a Level 8 monster directly to the field which can then be flipped face-up, or return any face-up monster on his side of the field that he wants to his hand in order to search for either the omni-negate Counter Trap Tachyon Transmigration which can be activated from the hand if he has Tachyon Dragon on the field, or Rank-Up Magic Barian's Force in order to evolve his ace monster into Number C107: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon, allowing him to effectively OTK opponents easily while leaving them unable to respond in any way if it detaches an overlay unit. The only requirements for this skill to take effect? The short version is that you're essentially only allowed to play cards Mizar used in the anime. But that doesn't really matter since he can also utilize staple Spell and Trap cards alongside his pile of Level 8 monsters. So to recap, this skill alone allows Mizar to turbo out a bunch of really powerful, annoying Rank 8 boss monsters on either Turn 1 or 2, set up for the next turn by searching for an omni-negate or a means to OTK the next turn if he already has said omni-negate in his hand, and can also grind out opponents easily by adding incredibly disruptive backrow alongside his omni-negate; some builds even run Rebirth of Parshath to have even more omni-negates because of how easily the deck can get a Counter Trap and discard fodder in hand. To give an idea of just how insane this deck is, this tournament had 11 Tachyon players in the Top 16 cut. When the time came for Top 8, all 8 players were using the deck, confirming it as Tier 0. It's quite telling that players began maindecking Mischief of the Gnomes, of all cards, as a silver bullet against Tachyon specifically.
- Shiranui had two stints of this:
- Their first bout of infamy was around their debut, where they took advantage of their budget-friendly nature and the variety of enablers for their playstyle like Burgeoning Whirlflame to trigger their on-banish effects and That Grass Looks Greener to fill up their Graveyard at lightning speed, making them both very fast and very powerful along with having superb grind games and versatility. Their reign of terror was ended by the banning of Grass and the limiting of several of their cards, and they were buried by power creep for a while.
- Their second coming was the release of Tachyon of Galaxy, which gave them some new toys in the form of Shiranui Style Samsara (which recycles their resources and allows them to stall like nobody's business) and their Link Monster Shiranui Skillsaga Supremacy (which provides great protection, recycling, and even play disruption with the right cards). Not only that, but the set came on the heels of Shiranui getting a Pick-Up Box dedicated to them and Mayakashi, allowing players to easily grab their key cards without sifting through piles of pack filler, and a brand new Skill in the form of Shiranui Style Successor, which lets them search and set up their Graveyard with its first effect while recycling their monsters and/or setting up banished Synchros for Skillsaga to summon using the second. Suddenly Shiranui was back with a vengeance boasting superb speed, consistency, and power output along with an excellent grind game, and their infamy is lessened only by the fact that they're the only other deck in the format capable of standing up to Tachyon. Sure enough, when the Top 100 decks of tha following month's KC Cup came out, there were two decks that clearly dominated all other optinons: Tachyon and Shiranui. If not for the sheer consistency and ability of Tachyon to win no matter the coin toss outcome compared to Shiranui, which despite its strong points still has many weaknesses by comparison, it would likely be Tier 0 alongside it. That being said, Shiranui is still strong enough to be the sole Tier 2 deck of the format.
- Their first bout of infamy was around their debut, where they took advantage of their budget-friendly nature and the variety of enablers for their playstyle like Burgeoning Whirlflame
Rush Duel
- In the earlier Rush Duel formats, players became very sick of Luke and his Dragon monsters very quickly, since Dragons had bar none the best monsters and Skills in the game. Multistrike Dragon Dragias was the best boss monster in the game by a mile with its brutal multiple-attacking effect and high stats, paired with the lack of Trap Cards to stop it, and was fully compatible with both of Luke's most broken Skills: Dragonic Resonance, which locks you into Dragons but also gives an ATK and level boost to your Dragons with 2300 or less ATK once per turn as long as you control an EARTH Effect monster (with Dragonic Slayer being the prime suspect for its ability to demolish backrow, such as Phantom Bind and Widespread Ruin, that could stop your Dragons from ripping apart the opponent's board and LP), and Ancient Forces, which makes Burning Blaze Dragon and Clear Ice Dragon into massive beaters while also setting up the Graveyard for Ancient Arise Dragon to wreak havoc. Both Skills were easy to use and extremely powerful when they worked, and even generic beatstick-heavy decks found spots for Dragias because it was just that good. Dragons were heavily hamstrung by the first round of Rush Duel banlist updates, and while it made them less broken, they're still very formidable on the ladder once players began building around the limits.
- Royal Rebels were already a force to be reckoned when they debuted with Roa, but with their main competition Dragons being heavily nerfed, as well as the introduction of a new powerful skill caused them to be utterly reviled. Hell Tuning Invasion is a skill exclusive to Roa that allows him to once per turn discard a card to force all monsters on the field into attack position, with any monsters level 5 or higher getting their levels reduced by 4, with increasing your own monsters to level 5, but you can not attack with any monster that is level 6 or lower the turn you use it. The skill allows players to completely bypass any attempt at defense and inflict massive amounts of damage every turn. With monsters like Royal Rebel's Heavy Metal and Royal Rebel's Invasion, you can lose more than half your life points from a single attack from the former, or have all your monsters destroyed at once by the later. If that wasn't bad enough, they have a very strong reliable trap in the form of King's Majesty that lets them block attacks by shuffling a level 1 monster from their graveyard to their deck. It get's worse as the deck has several protections against Widespread Union, the strongest trap in the game currently due to having a field spell or using Rouge of Archfiend to protect their boss monsters form any form of trap destruction.
