Phantom Knights Deck #773565 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 65/100 (±6 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Combo
• Secondary strategies: Control, Xyz/Link
• Format: master-duel

Legality

Main 40 / Extra 15 / Side 0 — status: Legal.

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Xyz bosses on the field (Dark Requiem and Arc Rebellion at 3000 ATK, Dark Rebellion and Four Heavenly Dragons at 2500) that keep attacking or destroy the opponent's board; Break Sword and Malevolent Scythe destroy or recur Phantom Knights monsters from the Graveyard
• Turn 1 (going first): Open a hand-summonable starter (Torn Scales, Silent Boots, Doomed Soleret or Decayed Cloak), search, Xyz into a Level 3 Xyz, and hold Ash Blossom, Infinite Impermanence or Fog Blade for the opponent's turn
• Turn 2 (going second): Hold hand traps (Ash Blossom, Infinite Impermanence, Maxx C) and Dominus Impulse or Dominus Spark to interrupt the opponent's first board, then rebuild through Graveyard revivals
• Recovery: Banish Phantom Knights from the Graveyard (Ancient Cloak, Stained Greaves) to revive monsters, and use Rank-Up-Magic Launch or Requiem to rebuild an Xyz from a surviving Xyz
• After siding: None evidenced: the deck runs no side deck (side_count 0) and the format allows up to 15

Why it scores here

The deck reliably opens a Phantom Knights engine: four three-copy hand-summonable starters give roughly an 85% chance of at least one in an opening five (hypergeometric, Inferred), and the 26-copy archetype core is almost always present. Its strongest scoring comes from interaction on the system level: seven hand traps, Dominus Spark and Dominus Impulse, and Fog Blade can answer both the summon and the board across both turns, and several Graveyard revival routes let it continue after one disruption. Closing power is high because the Extra Deck carries 2500 to 3000 ATK Xyz bosses. It is held back by the empty side deck (no post-side evidence), 14 traps that can be dead without a board, and no recorded boards to measure median output. Score is built from consistency, median output, interaction and resilience on the deck as a connected system; it is not an average of card scores, and Phantom Knights' popularity (usage stats) earned no points by itself.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Combo, D13 dropped and re-normalised over 97 (meta-neutral). Structural ≈ 68.6, Going First ≈ 72, Going Second ≈ 66, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 58.8. Modifiers: engine compactness (2); banlist exposure (-2); engine conflicts (-2). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability + ContextModifiers (Meta provisional; D13 excluded from Structural)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.85 · 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

• Four 3-copy hand-summonable starters give high opening access (Inferred)
• Seven hand traps plus Dominus Spark and Dominus Impulse cover both turns (Inferred)
• Several Graveyard revival routes allow recovery after one interruption (Inferred from text)
• Xyz bosses at 2500 to 3000 ATK provide closing power (Verified stats)

Weaknesses

• No side deck, so no post-side plan (Verified count)
• 14 traps can be dead without a board (Inferred)
• Three Mulcharmy Fuwalos are off-archetype and need an empty field (Inferred)
• Evilswarm Ophion and Exosister Karmael have unmet material requirements from the main deck (Verified text, Inferred access)

Critical choke points

• Going second: about 29% of six-card hands have no hand trap (Inferred)
• Single copies of Rank-Up-Magic Launch and Requiem are the only rank-up route (Verified count)
• Single copies of Foolish Burial, Maxx C and Reinforcement of the Army give no redundancy (Verified count)

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legality is Legal with 40 main, 15 extra and 0 side cards; Limited cards (Foolish Burial, Maxx C, Reinforcement of the Army) run at the legal limit of one copy; Card stats and card text from the resolved card list; Hypergeometric draw figures recomputed from the evidence (1 - C(38,5)/C(40,5) = 0.2372 for two copies in five)
• Inferred: Starter access about 0.85 in a five-card hand; Hand-trap coverage about 0.71 going second; Interaction density from text-role hints; Rank-Up-Magic dependence of Ophion and Karmael; Mulcharmy conflict with the board-based engine
• Provisional: Meta power and format fit (no dated sample); Post-side performance (no side deck, no data); Matchup outcomes
• Data gaps: No combos supplied: combo floor, median and ceiling are text-only inference No tournament link: archetype meta-share and per-pilot match record absent No win-rate telemetry exists in YGOVN: going-first, going-second and matchup rates are Inferred or Unknown Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied usage_statistics in_this_deck flags conflict with the card list: Rusty Bardiche, Dark Requiem, Cherubini and others appear in cards[] (zone extra) but are flagged in_this_deck:false, so missing_core is unreliable; cards[] was used Deck title is null; deck identified by archetype and card list only Side deck is empty; post-side behaviour cannot be assessed