Horus Deck #773958 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 62/100 (±7 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Control, Toolbox, Rank 8 Xyz
• Format: duel-links

Legality

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

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: King's Sarcophagus grind into Level-8 Horus bodies, converted into Rank-8 Xyz (Photon Lord / Number 38 / Dingirsu) that out-value the opponent while 2500-3000 ATK bodies close the game.; Going-second board break with Lava Golem / Nibiru / Underworld Goddess, then out-attack a stripped board.
• Turn 1 (going first): Land a card named 'King's Sarcophagus' (King's Sarcophagus itself or Walls of the Imperial Tomb), use its discard-to-send effect to put Horus monsters in the GY, self-summon them, and Xyz into one Rank-8 (Photon Lord for a monster-effect negate, Number 38 for a Spell negate, Dingirsu for destruction protection) while setting Canopic Protector or Infinite Impermanence.
• Turn 2 (going second): Open with hand traps and Lava Golem to shrink the opposing board, then play the same Sarcophagus line for two Rank-8 bodies plus a Link (S:P Little Knight / Underworld Goddess) and swing for damage; D.D. Crow and Bystial Druiswurm cover GY-based boards.
• Recovery: As long as a 'King's Sarcophagus' name stays on the field, each Horus monster can Special Summon itself from the GY once per turn, and Canopic Protector re-summons a Horus from hand or GY on the opponent's activation; Dingirsu can also protect the board from destruction.
• After siding: No Side Deck is registered (0/9) in this export, so there is no side plan to score; in a side-allowed context the flex slots are the conditional one-ofs (Soul Servant, Photon Jumper) and the third Lava Golem.

Why it scores here

Deck power here is a read of the whole Sarcophagus system, not an average of card scores. The deck reliably opens a 'King's Sarcophagus' name (six copies, roughly 70% at five cards) with Imsety and Walls of the Imperial Tomb as extra routes, so the engine is live in about 86% of hands while roughly 14% are engine-less. What it converts that into is a midrange board rather than a combo ceiling: two to three Level-8 Horus bodies into one Rank-8 Xyz (Photon Lord or Number 38 for a negate, Dingirsu for protection) behind a set Canopic Protector or Impermanence, with each Horus name able to re-summon itself once per turn. The interaction suite is the deck's strongest axis going second - Lava Golem, Nibiru, D.D. Crow, Droll and Underworld Goddess give real board-breaking and GY hate, with P(at least one hand trap in six) around 0.87. It is held back by three Lava Golem that are dead going first, single copies of every Rank-8 answer, an empty Side Deck and the absence of any tournament or combo sample, which caps the score in the low-to-mid 60s. Archetype usage share (Imsety and King's Sarcophagus both near 91% inclusion) was used only to confirm the list is a real, standard build - popularity earned no points.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: 0.75 Midrange / 0.25 Control. Structural ≈ 65, Going First ≈ 66, Going Second ≈ 70, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 62. Modifiers: Lava Golem going-first burden (-3); Banlist exposure (-1); Compact Rank-8 Extra Deck coverage (2). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability + ContextModifiers (Meta provisional/null)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.86 · key two-card combo ≈ 0.7 · full-brick estimate ≈ 0.14 (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Highly redundant engine access: 6 'King's Sarcophagus' names plus 3 Imsety, roughly 86% of hands contain an engine piece.
• Strong going-second package for this format: 3 Lava Golem, 2 Nibiru, 2 D.D. Crow, 2 Droll, Underworld Goddess and S:P Little Knight.
• Repeatable GY recursion - each Horus name re-summons itself once per turn while Sarcophagus is up, so the deck rebuilds after board wipes.
• Layered but varied interaction: monster-effect negate (Photon Lord), Spell negate (Number 38), destruction protection (Dingirsu), GY lock (Number 68), plus set Canopic Protector / Impermanence.
• Every Level-8 body converts into a meaningful Rank-8, so the Extra Deck is fully used rather than padded.

Weaknesses

• Three Lava Golem are close to dead cards going first, worsening the on-play dead-hand rate.
• Only one copy of each Rank-8 answer - removing Photon Lord leaves no second monster-effect negate.
• Every Sarcophagus/Imsety activation costs a card from hand, so the deck can run out of resources before it converts the board.
• Conditional one-ofs (Soul Servant with no Dark Magician, Photon Jumper with no Photon/Galaxy payoff beyond itself) add variance for little return.
• No Side Deck and no tournament sample - post-side and matchup claims cannot be supported.

Critical choke points

• A card named 'King's Sarcophagus' must stay on the field; without it the GY Horus monsters cannot Special Summon themselves and the engine stalls.
• Each Horus name self-summons only once per turn, so a second interaction on the same name ends that route.
• Discard costs are the fuel: a hand that spends two cards on Sarcophagus/Imsety activations has little left to play through a hand trap.
• Single copies of Photon Lord and Number 38 mean the deck's negate coverage is one card deep per type.
• Lava Golem tributes two opponent monsters but also locks out the Normal Summon for the turn, which can strand a follow-up engine line.

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legality: 30 Main / 9 Extra / 0 Side within duel-links size rules (20-30 / 0-9 / 0-9), no violations, status Legal.; Banlist tokens via BanDuelLink: Coach King Giantrainer Limited (1 run / 1 legal), Bystial Druiswurm Semi-Limited (1/2), Photon Jumper Semi-Limited (1/2).; Card text used for every functional read (King's Sarcophagus, Walls of the Imperial Tomb, Imsety, Canopic Protector, Horus the Black Flame Deity, Photon Lord, Number 38, Dingirsu, Number 68, S:P, Underworld Goddess, World Gears, Dark Magician of Destruction).; Composition: 16 distinct Main Deck cards, 9 distinct Extra Deck cards, attribute/race/level spreads as reported.
• Observed: usage statistics available with 22 rows: Imsety 91.1% (3 copies), King's Sarcophagus 91.1% (3), Duamutef 97.8% (1), Qebehsenuef 93.3% (1), Photon Jumper 73.3% (1), Hapi 71.1% (1), Horus the Black Flame Deity 71.1% (1), Soul Servant 60% (1), Lava Golem 60% (3), Canopic Protector 53.3% (3).; combo data reports total combos 0 / scored combos 0 ('no parseable boards').
• Inferred: Starter density: P(>=1 Sarcophagus-name in 5) approx. 0.70; P(>=1 of Sarcophagus/Walls/Imsety) approx. 0.86; engine-less hands approx. 14%.; Hand-trap group P(>=1 in a 6-card going-second hand) approx. 0.87.; Median output read as one Rank-8 Xyz plus one set interaction; ceiling read as two Rank-8 bodies plus a Link.; Resilience read from the once-per-turn self-summon of each Horus name plus Canopic Protector's chain-summon.; Going-first/going-second power, tournament reliability and pilotability derived from dimension scores, not from measured win rates.
• Provisional: Meta Power is null: no dated metagame sample and no tournament link were supplied.; Matchup coverage (D13) is a neutral-format estimate only; no archetype meta-share or per-pilot match record exists for this deck.; Post-side performance cannot be assessed - the Side Deck is empty in this export.
• Data gaps: No combos supplied - combo floor/median/ceiling is text-only inference, not a measured board distribution. No tournament link - archetype meta-share and per-pilot match record absent, so Meta Power stays provisional. No win-rate telemetry in YGOVN (going-first/second, matchup, game-level, brick/starter/OTK rates) - those signals are Inferred or Unknown. Conflict between usage statistics 'in this deck' flags and the resolved card list for several Extra Deck cards (e.g. Dingirsu, Photon Lord, Number 68, S:P Little Knight, Underworld Goddess, Coach King Giantrainer, Dark Magician of Destruction are marked not in deck but appear in the resolved Extra Deck); the resolved card list was treated as authoritative. Side Deck is empty (0/9), so Side Deck Adaptability cannot be evaluated on content. The only attached guide (id 1490, 'Hướng dẫn chơi Horus') has an empty snippet and 0 sections, providing no strategic-intent evidence. Probability table assumes a 5-card going-first hand; if this format's opening hand differs, the consistency figures shift.