Phantom Knights Deck #773605 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 58/100 (±8 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Combo, Control
• Format: master-duel

Legality

Main 40 / Extra 14 / Side 0 — status: Legal.

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Xyz and Link boss monsters (Dark Requiem Xyz Dragon, Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon, Dingirsu, Break Sword) built from Phantom Knights and Orcust graveyard and banish recursion; Ragged Gloves and Rank-Up-Magic Requiem ATK boosts and Malevolent Scythe / Four Heavenly Dragons follow-up
• Turn 1 (going first): Open with a Phantom Knights or Orcust starter (Decayed Cloak, Soleret, Harp Horror, Girsu) plus a second PK card to bootstrap, then Normal or Special Summon into an Xyz or Link. Ash Blossom and Dominus Impulse are live on the first turn; Droll & Lock Bird is dead without a draw.
• Turn 2 (going second): Hold Ash Blossom, Maxx C, Droll & Lock Bird and Forbidden Droplet to answer the opponent's first summon or search, then rebuild from the graveyard with the revived PK and Orcust engines.
• Recovery: Banish-cost recursion from the GY (Decayed Cloak, Silent Boots, Ancient Cloak, Harp Horror, Cymbal Skeleton) plus searchers (Ancient Cloak, Silent Boots, Requiem, Reinforcement, Malevolent Scythe) to rebuild the board after a single negation.
• After siding: Not defined: the deck runs 0 side cards, so there is no authored post-side plan. Any adaptation has to come from the 40-card main.

Why it scores here

The deck reliably opens a functional starter: 12 copies of Decayed Cloak, Soleret, Harp Horror and Girsu give P(at least one in a 5-card opening hand) of about 0.85, though most of those starters need a second PK or Orcust card to bootstrap (Inferred). It converts into pressure through a 14-card Extra Deck of seven Xyz and seven Link monsters, with 2500–3000 ATK bosses and graveyard recursion that keeps the engine running after one disruption. Its interaction is the strongest part of the system: six hand traps, Forbidden Droplet, Orcust Crescendo, Phantom Knights' Fog Blade and Wing give it multiple answers to a single opposing play. The score does not come from Phantom Knights being a popular archetype, and it does not come from averaging card scores; it reflects the three-way archetype split (33% exact-name purity), the absence of a side deck and the missing combo and meta evidence.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Midrange. Structural ≈ 63, Going First ≈ 62, Going Second ≈ 68, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 52. Modifiers: Engine conflicts (-3). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability (Meta provisional) + ContextModifiers

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

• Six hand traps and a multi-card negation suite give several answers to one opposing play
• Two engines (Phantom Knights and Orcust) with graveyard recursion sustain multiple routes after disruption
• Extra Deck of seven Xyz and seven Link monsters offers boss options with 2500–3000 ATK

Weaknesses

• No side deck: no post-side adaptation
• Engine split: only 33% of Main Deck copies are exact-name Phantom Knights
• Many single-copy cards lower hand functionality and increase variance

Critical choke points

• Starters that need a second PK or Orcust card in hand to bootstrap
• Single-negation exposure of the lone Xyz boss before recursion completes

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legal under master-duel size and copy rules (40 Main, 14 Extra, 0 Side); Limited cards (Foolish Burial, Maxx C, Reinforcement of the Army) run at legal maximum of 1; Droll & Lock Bird run at Semi-Limited maximum of 2; Archetype purity 33.3% (18 of 54 non-generic copies); Usage statistics show Phantom Knights core cards present at high inclusion rates
• Inferred: P(≥1 of 12 starters in 5-card hand) ≈ 0.85; Ceiling from Xyz boss and Ragged Gloves ATK line; Hand-trap going-second proxy P(≥1 in 6) ≈ 0.65
• Provisional: Meta Power is null; no dated metagame sample supplied; D13 is a neutral placeholder score
• Data gaps: No combos supplied: floor, median and ceiling are text-only inference No tournament link: archetype meta-share and pilot match record absent No dated metagame sample: Meta Power provisional Usage statistics mark several Extra Deck cards (Dark Requiem, Dark Rebellion, Four Heavenly Dragons, Rusty Bardiche, Cherubini, S:P Little Knight, Shamanite Shamanknight) in_this_deck=false although they are in the cards list; the cards list was trusted No deck title (title null) No win-rate telemetry; going-first/second and matchup signals are Inferred