Phantom Knights Deck #768699 — Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 40/100 (±10 · Confidence: Low)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Combo, Stun
• Format: ocg

Legality

Main 47 / Extra 14 / Side 0 — status: Illegal. 3 violation(s).

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Rank-Up-Magic and Xyz chains through Phantom Knights monsters into Xyz/Link bosses (Break Sword, Malevolent Scythe, Rusty Bardiche, Dark Requiem, Arc Rebellion); Hand-trap-protected Xyz boss stays on board and beats through Phantom Knights' Fog Blade and Wing protection
• Turn 1 (going first): Open a Phantom Knights starter (Decayed Cloak, Silent Boots, Doomed Soleret, Torn Scales), search via Ancient Cloak or Reinforcement of the Army, then Rank-Up-Magic into a DARK Xyz boss; keep Ash or Impermanence up for the response
• Turn 2 (going second): Hand-trap the opponent's first engine play (Ash, Ghost Ogre, Impermanence, Dominus Impulse) using the 74% chance of at least one hand trap in six cards, then rebuild through Phantom Knights recursion from the GY
• Recovery: Recycle Phantom Knights monsters from the GY through Torn Scales, Silent Boots and Decayed Cloak; Xyz bosses detach to rebuild with Raider's Knight and Malevolent Scythe
• After siding: Not defined: the deck has no side cards, so no post-side plan can be evaluated

Why it scores here

The deck opens a Phantom Knights starter in most hands: the archetype core has a 97.2% chance of at least one copy in a 5-card opening hand, and the three-copy starters sit at about 29% each. The Xyz and Link extra deck (14 cards, with strong 2000 to 3000 ATK bosses) gives it good closing power once a Rank-Up line goes through. Nine hand traps (Ash Blossom, Infinite Impermanence, Ghost Ogre) plus a dense trap suite give a 74% chance of at least one hand trap in six going-second cards, which supports interaction on the opponent's first engine play. The score comes from consistency, interaction density and extra-deck coverage on the system, not from averaging card scores, and not from archetype popularity, which earned no points since no usage share or tournament data was supplied. The deck is illegal on two cards (three copies of Ash Blossom and Dominus Impulse against a limit of two), so it is capped at a theoretical, structural-only score, and an empty side deck leaves no post-side plan.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Midrange. Structural ≈ 53.5, Going First ≈ 50, Going Second ≈ 58, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 45. Modifiers: Illegal copy limit (theoretical cap) (-12). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability (Meta provisional); Illegal deck capped to a theoretical score: 51.8 - 12 = 40

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.97 · key two-card combo ≈ — · full-brick estimate ≈ — (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Archetype core is almost always present in opening hands (0.97 for at least one core card)
• Dense interaction suite: 9 hand traps plus a broad set of trap-based negations and removal
• Extra Deck has strong Xyz and Link bosses with good closing power (2000 to 3000 ATK)
• Recursion through Phantom Knights monsters in the GY gives redundancy after disruption

Weaknesses

• Illegal list: 3 copies each of Ash Blossom and Dominus Impulse exceed the OCG limit of 2
• Empty side deck (0 cards), so there is no post-side plan at all
• Trap-heavy main deck (19 Trap Cards) with many Set-dependent and GY-dependent cards, raising brick risk
• Low exact-archetype purity (44.3%); 34 off-archetype copies dilute the engine
• No combo data, guide data or tournament data, so the power read rests on text and probability

Critical choke points

• Phantom Knights starter access: a hand without a Phantom Knights monster or a usable Rank-Up-Magic stalls the engine
• Ash Blossom and Dominus Impulse copy count must drop to 2 before the list is legal
• Going-second plan depends on hand traps; a hand with none gives the opponent the first engine play

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Main 47 and Extra 14 are within the OCG size rules (main 40-60, extra 0-15); Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring and Dominus Impulse each run 3 copies against a legal limit of 2 (Semi-Limited); Side deck is empty (0 cards); Archetype composition: 27 exact-name Phantom Knights copies, 44.3% purity; Extra Deck: 9 Xyz and 5 Link monsters; stats such as Dark Requiem 3000 ATK; Usage: Phantom Knights archetype core has 23 copies in deck; Doomed Soleret and Ragged Gloves are core
• Inferred: Engine consistency: P(>=1 archetype core in hand5) = 0.97 and 3-copy starter P = 0.29 (hypergeometric estimate); Hand-trap coverage: P(>=1 hand trap in hand6 going second) = 0.74; Brick and dead-card risk from the trap-heavy list and GY-dependent traps; Interaction density and breadth from card text (negation, removal, hand-trap roles); Pilotability: multi-step Rank-Up/Xyz chains with timing-sensitive responses
• Provisional: Meta power: no dated metagame sample supplied, so it is null; Format fit and matchup coverage: no tournament link, so D13 is provisional; Tournament reliability: estimated from structure alone, not from match results
• 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 rates) no guides supplied for the archetype (guides_evidence total_guides = 0) Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied Deck title is null in the source export