Branded Deck #751185 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 54/100 (±7 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Blind-Second / OTK, Fusion, Graveyard-centric
• Format: duel-links

Legality

Main 30 / Extra 9 / Side 0 — status: Legal.

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Branded Fusion chains resolving into Mirrorjade the Iceblade Dragon / Lubellion the Searing Dragon, grinding the opponent out with recurring Level 8 Fusions and 2500-3000 ATK bodies.; Strip the opponent's board with Lava Golem or Radian Kaiju, then use Fallen of Albaz's opponent-material Fusion Summon and Khaos Starsource Dragon's destruction effect to convert the leftover board into lethal.
• Turn 1 (going first): Open Branded Fusion (or Aluber the Jester of Despia searching it), fuse Albaz + a DARK into Lubellion the Searing Dragon, then chain into Mirrorjade; hold Branded Lost to protect the Fusion Summon, Mercourier as a monster-effect negate, and Branded Retribution / Branded Banishment as follow-up interaction.
• Turn 2 (going second): Tribute over two bodies with Lava Golem or one with Radian, then use Fallen of Albaz / Branded Fusion / Khaos Starsource Dragon to consume what remains and swing with 2500-3000 ATK Fusions against a 4000 LP opponent.
• Recovery: Rebuild through Ad Libitum of Despia, Screams of the Branded, Branded in Red, Branded Sword's token generation and its banish-zone recovery, plus Mirrorjade's End Phase board wipe when it leaves the field.
• After siding: Duel Links is played without a Side Deck (side_count 0); adaptation happens through skill selection and the flexible 1-of Branded package, so no post-side data exists.

Why it scores here

This is a genuine Branded engine — Fallen of Albaz, Branded Fusion, Aluber, Albion the Shrouded Dragon, Blazing Cartesia and the Bystial suite all convert into Mirrorjade / Lubellion lines with real graveyard recursion — but the list is not the archetype-standard build, so it earns its score on the system rather than on the archetype's reputation. Turn-1 ignition is thin: only roughly three cards (Branded Fusion x2, Aluber) are unconditional starters, about 43% of five-card hands, with conditional additions from Albion the Shrouded Dragon and The Bystial Lubellion lifting the practical rate only into the mid-50s. Fifteen of the twenty-one distinct Main Deck cards are singletons and three Lava Golem actively forbid the Normal Summon that Aluber, Albaz and Kitt depend on, so the median hand is smaller and more conflicted than the ceiling line suggests. What keeps it respectable is the recovery layer — Ad Libitum, Screams of the Branded, Branded in Red, Branded Sword and Mirrorjade's End Phase wipe — plus five board-breaker slots that make the going-second game genuinely functional in a 4000 LP format. Popularity and the guides calling Branded a top-tier Duel Links deck earned no points here, and no card scores were averaged into this number: the 54 comes from consistency, cohesion, conversion and recovery measured as one system, with the near-uncastable Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon slot and the Lava Golem Normal Summon lock taking the modifier hit.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: 0.70 Midrange / 0.30 Blind-Second. Structural ≈ 58, Going First ≈ 56, Going Second ≈ 62, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 54. Modifiers: Hard garnet / near-uncastable Extra Deck slot (-2); Engine conflict: Lava Golem Normal Summon lock (-1). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability + modifiers (Meta Power provisional/null)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.43 · key two-card combo ≈ 0.13 · full-brick estimate ≈ 0.28 (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Authentic Branded Fusion core: Albaz x3, Branded Fusion x2, Aluber, Albion the Shrouded Dragon, Blazing Cartesia and the Bystial suite all feed the same Fusion plan.
• Excellent recursion layer (Ad Libitum, Screams of the Branded, Branded in Red, Branded Sword, Mirrorjade GY wipe) gives real multi-turn staying power.
• Five true board-breaker slots (3 Lava Golem, 2 Radian Kaiju) make the going-second game functional in a 4000 LP format.
• Mirrorjade banishes on a Quick Effect and wipes the board when it leaves the field, which is a genuine boss-monster interaction for Duel Links.
• Legal, correctly sized list (30 Main / 9 Extra, all-Fusion Extra Deck) with no banlist issues.

Weaknesses

• Only about three unconditional turn-1 starters, so roughly half of going-first hands lack a clean Fusion ignition.
• Lava Golem's Normal Summon lock directly conflicts with Aluber, Fallen of Albaz and Springans Kitt ignition lines.
• Fifteen singletons in a 30-card Main Deck lowers redundancy for every non-core role.
• Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon is close to uncastable without The Light - Hex-Sealed Fusion plus a Dragon already on the field.
• Zero curated hand traps; Mercourier is the only monster-effect negate and it requires an Albaz Fusion already on board.
• Missing archetype-core pieces flagged by usage data (Branded Opening 77.8%, Predaplant Dragostapelia 100%, Filia Regis 88.9%, Branded Beast 77.8%).

Critical choke points

• Branded Fusion resolving — if it is negated or the hand lacks it/Aluber, the turn collapses to a set-Trap pass.
• Graveyard setup (Albaz / Branded Spell-Trap in GY) is needed before Springans Kitt, Branded in Red and Ad Libitum become live.
• The Extra Deck's Mirrorjade package: losing access to it removes nearly all interactive pressure.
• The single copy of Branded Lost is the only protection against Fusion-Summon negation.

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legality: 30 Main / 9 Extra / 0 Side, no size warnings, no violations under BanDuelLink.; Bystial Druiswurm and Bystial Magnamhut are Semi-Limited at 2 copies and the deck runs 1 of each.; Card text for every distinct main, extra and side card (Fallen of Albaz, Branded Fusion, Mirrorjade, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, The Light - Hex-Sealed Fusion, etc.).; Composition: 21 distinct Main Deck cards with a copy histogram of 15/3/3 and a 9-card all-Fusion Extra Deck.; Usage statistics exist for the Branded archetype (29 stat rows, core threshold 50%).
• Observed: combos_evidence reports 0 total combos and 0 scored boards ('no parseable boards').; probabilities: P(≥1 in 5) = 0.4335 for any 3-copy card, 0.3103 for any 2-copy card, 0.1667 for any 1-copy card; searcher-text group of 11 copies = 0.9184.; role_tag_counts show 0 hand traps, 0 floodgates, 4 cards with negation text, 7 with removal text.
• Inferred: Effective turn-1 ignition ≈ 0.55 once conditional enablers (Albion the Shrouded Dragon, The Bystial Lubellion + Saronir) are counted.; Full-brick estimate ≈ 0.28 for the going-first hand.; Median line is one Fusion plus one interaction piece, well below the Mirrorjade ceiling.; Lava Golem's Normal Summon lock conflicts with Aluber / Fallen of Albaz / Springans Kitt ignition.; Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon requires The Light - Hex-Sealed Fusion plus a Dragon on field and is effectively a dead slot.
• Provisional: Meta Power is null: no dated metagame sample was supplied.; D13 matchup/format fit rests on archetype-level guide descriptions of Branded as a top-tier Duel Links deck, not on measured results.; D12 side deck adaptability cannot be measured because Duel Links has no Side Deck (side_count 0).
• Data gaps: No combos supplied — combo floor/median/ceiling is text-only inference. No tournament link — archetype meta-share and per-pilot match record absent. No win-rate telemetry exists in YGOVN (going-first/second, matchup, game-level, brick/starter/OTK rates) — those signals are Inferred or Unknown. Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied. Evidence inconsistency: usage_statistics marks Alba-Lenatus, Albion the Branded Dragon, Mirrorjade, Granguignol, Lubellion the Searing Dragon and Khaos Starsource Dragon as 'in_this_deck: false / missing core', yet all six appear in the resolved Extra Deck card list; the resolved card list was trusted (verified) and the usage flags treated as stale. No Duel Links skill is recorded in the export, although skills are a major power lever in that format.