Phantom Knights Deck #773909 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 71/100 (±6 · Confidence: Medium)

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

Legality

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

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Xyz and Link boards (Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon, Four Heavenly Dragons, Arc Rebellion, Dark Requiem, Rusty Bardiche) built from Phantom Knights Graveyard recursion and Rank-Up-Magic; Negation-led board control (Ash, Infinite Impermanence, Dominus Impulse, Dominus Spark, Fog Blade) that lets the Xyz boss stick
• Turn 1 (going first): Open a Phantom Knights starter (Doomed Soleret, Silent Boots, Torn Scales, Decayed Cloak), use GY-triggered summons into a Level 3 or 4 Xyz, then Rank-Up into a Xyz Dragon
• Turn 2 (going second): Use a hand trap (Ash, Infinite Impermanence, Dominus Impulse, Maxx C) on the opponent's first summon or activation, then rebuild the Xyz engine from the Graveyard
• Recovery: Banish Decayed Cloak, Torn Scales or Ancient Cloak from the GY to add or summon more Phantom Knights; Rank-Up-Magic Launch and Requiem re-establish a boss after an interruption
• After siding: Not applicable: Master Duel uses no Side Deck (side 0 is legal), so there is no post-side plan to score

Why it scores here

The deck reliably opens an archetype starter: the 26-card Phantom Knights core gives a 0.997 hypergeometric chance of at least one core card in a 5-card opening, and four different 3-copy starters each reach 0.34 odds in the opening hand alone. It converts that starter into Xyz and Link bosses through Graveyard-triggered summons and two Rank-Up-Magic spells, with a high ceiling in the Xyz Dragon family, and it has 14 extra-deck options of which all 25 core extra-deck and Xyz cards are present. Its interaction is layered across hand traps, traps and bosses that negate or destroy, with 12 negation-text and 27 removal-text cards, and that is what earns the going-second score. Structural score is a weighted blend of the system dimensions, not an average of card scores, and popularity or usage share earned no points. Meta Power is null because no dated metagame sample exists, and no win-rate or recorded board data supports the median score, so the combo floor is Inferred from text.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Combo, meta-neutral (D13 dropped and re-normalized over remaining 97 weight points). Structural ≈ 71, Going First ≈ 70, Going Second ≈ 74, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 66. Modifiers: Engine compactness (2); Banlist exposure (-1). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability (Meta provisional); Structural 71.3, TR 66, modifiers +1 = 71

Probability & combo summary

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

Strengths

• Dense archetype core keeps starter access near certain
• Layered negation and removal across hand, field and GY
• Xyz Dragon bosses give a high closing ceiling
• Compact 40/15 build with no illegal copies

Weaknesses

• No recorded boards, so the floor and median are inferred
• Several hand traps are dead on some hands
• Single Rank-Up-Magic copies limit repeated boss rebuilds
• No side deck, so no post-side adaptation

Critical choke points

• Rank-Up-Magic Launch and Requiem (one copy each) for rebuilding a boss after interruption
• Reliance on a Graveyard starter after the first negation

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legal main 40 and extra 15 with no violations; Archetype core of 25 of 25 cards present in the list; Three Limited cards each at 1 copy
• Inferred: Starter access and consistency from hypergeometric odds; Interaction density from card text; Combo ceiling from Xyz and GY-recursion text
• Provisional: Meta Power (null); D13 matchup and format fit; D12 side adaptability (no side deck)
• Data gaps: No combos supplied; combo floor, median and ceiling are text-only inference No tournament link; archetype meta-share and per-pilot record absent usage statistics in this deck flags are false for 11 extra-deck core cards that the deck list does run (Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon, Four Heavenly Dragons, Dark Requiem, Rusty Bardiche, Cherubini, Arc Rebellion, Shamanknight, Raider's Knight, Evilswarm Ophion, Malevolent Scythe, S:P Little Knight); the true core presence is 25 of 25, not the reported 56 percent No win-rate telemetry exists in YGOVN Meta Power is provisional without a dated metagame sample