Phantom Knights Deck #774439 — Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 30/100 (±10 · Confidence: Low)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Stun, Tempo
• Format: tcg

Legality

Main 55 / Extra 15 / Side 0 — status under the rules at evaluation time: Illegal. 4 violation(s).

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Zombie and Phantom Knights boards built from Call of the Haunted / Pumpking / Phantom Knights Xyz-Link pressure; no recorded combos, so the line is text-inferred only.; Hand-trap and negation interaction (Ash Blossom, Ghost Ogre, Skull Meister, Droll & Lock Bird, PSY-Framegear Gamma) buying turns for the board.
• Turn 1 (going first): Open a starter from the archetype core (Phantom Knights of Doomed Soleret, Mulcharmy, Call of the Haunted) and extend via Xyz/Link Summons; Inferred from card text.
• Turn 2 (going second): Hold 1-2 hand traps (Ash Blossom, Ghost Ogre, Skull Meister, Droll) to answer the opponent's first board, then convert through Extra Deck monsters; Inferred.
• Recovery: Recur Zombies from the GY (Officiating Reverie, Mezuki, Changshi, Stare of the Snake Hair) and search Call of the Haunted / Pumpking-linked cards; Inferred from text.
• After siding: Not evaluable: the deck has no side deck, so there is no post-side plan.

Why it scores here

The deck's engine is spread across several sub-archetypes (Call of the Haunted, Phantom Knights, Mulcharmy, Goblin, PSY-Frame, Death, Dominus), with only 6 of 55 Main Deck copies carrying the exact Phantom Knights name, so consistency is estimated from the 17-copy archetype core (P of at least one in a 5-card opening hand is about 0.86, Inferred). Interaction is the strongest part of the system: 11 hand traps and 14 negation-text cards let it interrupt most openings, and that density earns the going-second and interaction scores. Median and ceiling output could not be measured because no combos were supplied, so the combo dimensions are text-only and kept moderate. The score is capped to theoretical/structural-only because the list breaks the TCG copy limits on three cards and has no side deck. Archetype popularity and the 8.6% exact-name purity were not credited, and the card scores were not averaged.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Midrange primary with Stun-style interaction weight in D7 (Inferred). Structural ≈ 51, Going First ≈ 50, Going Second ≈ 55, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 45. Modifiers: Banlist exposure (-8); Engine conflicts (-4); Illegal cap (-8). Final formula: No normal Final Contextual score: legality is Illegal. Formula would be 0.80*Structural(51) + 0.20*TournamentReliability(45) + modifiers(-12) = 38, then capped to 30 for the Illegal status (theoretical/structural-only). Meta Power is null (provisional).

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.25 · 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

• Dense hand-trap and negation coverage (11 hand traps, 14 negation-text cards)
• Multiple Extra Deck closers with high ATK (Verified)
• Several recursion and search routes into the Zombie core (Inferred)

Weaknesses

• Three cards break TCG copy limits, so the list is illegal as built (Verified)
• No side deck (Verified)
• Low exact-archetype purity (8.6%) and many off-archetype copies weaken engine coherence (Verified count)
• No recorded combos, so floor, median and ceiling are unmeasured (Verified gap)

Critical choke points

• Starter access to the Call of the Haunted / Phantom Knights core in the opening hand (Inferred)
• Ash Blossom and Dominus Impulse legality: at 3 copies each they cannot be played in a legal event

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Copy-limit violations for Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, Dominus Impulse and S:P Little Knight; Main 55 / Extra 15 / Side 0 counts and size rules; Card stats and text excerpts for the listed cards; Archetype purity 8.6%, role-tag counts
• Observed: Archetype usage stats: core inclusion for Phantom Knights and Call of the Haunted cards
• Inferred: Consistency estimate P(at least one archetype-core card in hand) about 0.86; Hand-trap coverage and going-second split; Going-first and going-second plans from text
• Provisional: Meta Power (null); Matchup fit and format fit (no dated meta sample)
• 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 for going-first/second, matchup or brick rates Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied No side deck: post-side adaptability cannot be evaluated