Unchained Gameplay Guide

The cage held the Witch for what seemed like an eternity.

Special Summon an Unchained from the HAND or GRABBED. This does a lot of things. It allows the deck to reuse a lot of resources and also sets up and reuses "Disruptions" to harass the opponent a lot during the turn. It's stronger than any deck in long games, remember, it can summon ANY Unchained monster.

This can be simply understood as "Destroy 1 card", "Use 1 monster your opponent controls as Link Material", or "Summon a playable card from the graveyard" depending on what you summon.

It's best to play this card at max ping x3 because you WANT to see it. But it can also be played at x2 because it's searchable.

Here the witch's soul was split into two. The embodiment of Sorrow and Hatred as it escaped from the cage.

Destroy an Unchained Monster you control to destroy any other card on the field. This card is very powerful, in theory it gives you -1 card advantage. But the thing is, every Unchained monster has an effect that activates after being destroyed, (except Unchained Abomination ) and that's how we get advantage. Usually this translates into an additional way to destroy a card if you summon Abominable Unchained Soul , or you can also summon any other card for defense, since I think you'll use this on your opponent's turn 90% of the time. What's interesting is that you can also destroy a card you control instead of your opponent's card. This can actually lead to interesting situations, as it can translate into "summon 2 monsters from your deck" if you destroy another Unchained card with it. More notably, it allows a surprising way to OTK your opponent after you clear the field.

This is obviously a powerful card, as it can turn any Unchained Monster into Destruction. It's best played at x3, but playing it at x2 is also reasonable. Especially since it can be searched by the next card on this list.

Shikigami, is being transformed into a more ferocious beast through Anguish and Rage .

A card that EVERY deck wants. The Spell Search card that literally searches everything in the Archetype. I don't think I need to explain much about this card, right? It's a card that you can use at will, to get whatever you're missing. Need a starter? Take Aruha. Need a Spell/Trap? Take Chamber. All in all, this is a very strong card.

You can only search once per turn, but if you start with these 2 cards in your hand, that's fine! Remember, you can set this card and let it be destroyed to summon an Unchained monster from your deck.

Funny enough, this card doesn't have Unchained in its name. This would be related to the effect of Unchained Twin - Sarama. Pay attention.

Shikigami, when fused with Anguish and Rage.

A Continuous Spell that destroys a card whenever we Link Summon an Unchained. It adds disruption to the enemy and is another way to destroy with our cards. But this deck already has plenty of self-destruction so the effect of this card is not worth playing in most cases. It can definitely help destroy the enemy's board but it is not a good card to play.

Note that it will not summon an Unchained monster if destroyed while face-up, it must be face-down so that's where it sucks.

Play up to 1. Additional copies are brick only as this is a continuous card.

The Twins

Konami mistranslated and called them Twins in the TCG despite the fact that there are three of them.

Similar to Spell/Traps, Twins both have effects that allow them to special summon an Unchained monster from the HAND or Deck when destroyed. The only difference is that they can be summoned from the hand and do not need to be set to activate these effects. Again, this effect is important because it makes the deck... a fully competitive deck. It allows us to restore all the Unchaineds allowing them to have massive defenses (similar to Spritual Beast Tamer Winda. ), while also giving you access to larger Unchained Souls, which is important to the strategy because they represent a way to summon your Links.

First, the Witch is the embodiment of suffering (Anguish).

Unchained Twins - Aruha is the main starter of the deck. It can Special Summon itself from the hand by destroying a card you control. As long as you have cards to destroy, Aruha gives you easy access to your Unchained Souls for easy Link Summoning. What's more, Aruha allows you to easily spam monsters onto the field when combined with Unchained Spell/Trap. Especially since you can summon the next Starter card on the list with this effect.

Note that using Aruha's effect will lock you from summoning only Fiends for the rest of the turn. Luckily, that doesn't matter much since the list of Fiend monsters in the Extra Deck is quite strong.

Aruha is the best of the Twins, play x3 to increase your chances of winning.

The Witch is the embodiment of Hatred and Rage.

Unchained Twins - Rakea is the second starter card of the deck . Her effect is a Quick effect, allowing you to destroy a card on your field. This is obviously a Spell/Trap activation effect, allowing you to summon Unchained Souls. She will often be the first target to summon if you start with Aruha and will be a very useful combo extension tool. There will also be some cases where you want to use this card's effect to avoid disruption for your other cards. An example of this is destroying Unchained Twins - Sarama to avoid the effect of Effect Veiler or Crackdown targeting Sarama.

Note that while you can use this effect itself to self-destruct, that will NOT trigger her summon effect.

Similar to Aruha, using Rakea's effect will also lock you from summoning only Fiends for the rest of that turn. Play x3 since it's a starter, but you can also just drop it to 2 if you want more slots for tech cards.

The Shikigami of the Sorcerer.

Unchained Twins - Sarama is your main tool for recovery. This little guy is quite interesting. Sarama alone cannot start any of your normal combos because it depends on whether you have an Unchained card in your GY or not. Sarama sets an Unchained card, be it a Spell/Trap or a Monster, to your field and then allows you to destroy any card you control (which means it will trigger a special summon from your deck). But if you have another card to destroy instead of a Spell/Trap, you can basically just re-use that Spell/Trap from your GY. Sarama is also very closely linked to Unchained Soul of Disaster . Because when Disaster is destroyed, it will summon any 1 Unchained card from the Graveyard.

Similar to Rakea, Sarama can destroy himself with his own effect but it does NOT trigger his GY effect to summon Unchained.

IMPORTANT: Ambomination's Prison is NOT an "Unchained" card by name. So Sarama will NOT be able to Set it with her effect.

Sarama is essentially what allows the deck to survive tough matchups. Playing him x3 is great in better counter matchups. But realistically, since he's not a starter, you can go x2 because you don't want to Normal Summon Sarama instead of Rakea.

He is the wizard we are talking about.

Abominable Unchained Soul , also known as AUS, is a pretty crazy card . As an initiator, it can act as a generic handtrap that can be used to get even with your opponent. It has the ability to special summon itself from your HAND if a card you control is destroyed in any way. And when you summon it, you can discard 1 card from your hand (sent to the graveyard) to destroy a card on the field without TARGETTING the target. The discard can be a bit costly, but it can also be beneficial to the deck ( well, so that it benefits when you discard a certain brick). These two effects combined can also help you easily trigger OTK combos for your deck. You can clear the enemy field, then attack with a 3000 ATK monster? Awesome.

Additionally, AUS can also special summon itself from the GY during the End Phase if it is destroyed during that turn. However, this will not actually happen very often. You can only Special Summon AUS once per turn. If you use its hand effect, or if you summon it from the deck, this final effect of AUS will not activate.

Play at least x1, at most x2, but never x3. 2 is usually the best bet, drawing him isn't bad but usually only draw a really good starter. Playing x3 can just ruin your hand.

And here is Shikigami, after thousands of years of imprisonment, transformed into a beast that reflects the soul of the Sorcerer at that time.

Unchained Soul of Disaster is here to say hi to you in your starter hand =)))! Disaster is the worst Unchained card to draw and is usually a pain in the ass to deal with in your hand. However, its effect makes it quite difficult to throw out of Decklists. It has 0 ATK, but gains 300 for each Unchained card in the graveyard. This won't be relevant since you'll almost always be using its second effect.

Disaster can target and use your opponent's monster to Link Summon a DARK Link Monster. This is a powerful form of removal that also gives you a huge advantage. For most decks, you'll most likely just use this to summon Unchained Soul of Rage (or another Dark Link-2 like Underclock Taker ), but for other Link Decks, you can even use this to go all the way up to Link 3 or 4 if you target your opponent's Link 2-3 monster! This makes Disaster a powerful tool when going later, but it's still usually worse than AUS because it's pretty easy to counter. Just use Book of Moo. or Evacuation right after this effect is used.

The strongest part of Disaster is arguably its Graveyard effect. If it is destroyed, it can summon ANY Unchained from the GY. As I mentioned with Sarama, this allows the deck to have strong recovery potential and makes it quite important to keep running smoothly in most cases.

Max play is x1. It sucks to draw this card and it's completely useless. There's also a version where this card doesn't get played at all, and it seems like in the Duel Links format, games will be a bit faster for this deck thanks to the 4k LP.

Shikigami has the power of Rakea.

REQUIRES an "Unchained Soul" as a material. Meaning you must summon one of the Level 8s on turn 1 to do this.

Unchained Soul of Rage is the deck's main form of disruption. An extremely powerful disruption. With a quick effect, only during your opponent's Main Phase , you can target and use a special summon as Link Material to create a Dark Link Monster, similar to   Unchained Soul of Disaster . Everything I said about Disaster's effect applies to this one as well. You'll mainly use this effect to summon Link-3 Archetypes, but it will occasionally be used to summon   Knightmare Unicorn instead acts as an additional interrupt tool.

If destroyed, Rage will give you the ability to add a Fiend monster in your GY back to your hand. This can add back any Fiend, so you could add back something like Skull Meister if you wanted, but this effect will usually be used to recast... whatever name fits this. AUS if your opponent destroys rage at the start of their turn with something like Dark Hole . , Aruha or Rakea for the next turn, or more valuable Sarama to secure your next turn.

Play 2-3. It's best to play x3, however you may want to have extra space in your deck for other cards.

Shikigami with Aruha's power.

REQUIRES an "Unchained Soul" as a material. Can be one of the level 8 Souls or the Unchained Soul of Rage .

Unchained Soul of Anguish is a Link-3 Archetype that has the same effect as Disaster. You lose the effect quickly without   Unchained Soul of Rage does, but this time you can freely use this effect on your turn to Link your opponent's monster. Everything I said about   Unchained Soul of Disaster applies here too. The Link-4 we summon from this effect will always be Unchained Abomination . to remove more and play safer on your opponent's turn if you can't OTK, or   Topologic Bomber Dragon for another way to force critical hits or as another board clear.

Anguish will share Rage's GY effects when destroyed.

Play x1 or x2. Recommend x2.

It is a Shikigami that possesses the power of both Twins. It will be the monster that leads to the destruction of humanity.

Unchained Abomination is a boss monster. Although it has no effect when destroyed, it has 3 different effects to destroy a card on the field.

• If a card is destroyed on the field, except by Abomination's own effect, you can target and destroy a card on the field.
• When a monster is destroyed by battle, you can target and destroy one card on the field.
• During either player's End Phase, you may target and destroy a card on the field.

As long as Abomination is alive on the field, it will spell disaster for your opponent. It basically powers up all your Unchained cards and will easily clear your opponent's board. And thanks to its ultimate effect, it will also completely nullify any other Spell/Traps based control strategies as all their backrow cards will be destroyed before they have a chance to activate them. As soon as you summon Abomination, you're basically in a very ez game where you win the match.

Play x1, you won't need more than x1 of this card

Knightmares need no introduction. We all know what they do.

Knightmare Unicorn is the most important card and is often considered the core card of the deck. It is a DARK Link-3 card with a powerful effect, giving     Unchained Soul of Rage another perk to summon.

Other Knightmares are not Dark-type, meaning they cannot be summoned with the Unchained Soul of Disaster or Rage effects, but they can still appear.

Topologic Bomber Dragon is a card that most people probably forgot about even in Duel Links because it's a Limited-1 card that conflicts with every other good Limited-1 card. It's a strong replacement for   Unchained Abomination or   Borrelsword Dragon , just provided a powerful field-clearing move that we can take advantage of with     Abominable Chamber of the Unchained and another way to take down opponents with Bomber Dragon's second effect.

Dingirsu, the Orcust of the Evening Star is a Rank 8 card that can be created with 2 Unchained Souls in the main deck. This is a very situational card, as the deck already has a lot of different ways to break the enemy's defense. However, Dingirsu can be useful if the opponent summons something untargetable, as that is a big problem for Unchained decks. It's hard to create, but that's what the deck has to go through just to take down a Kozmo or a Saber Dancer.

D/D/D Stone King Darius is a Rank 3 Fiend that can be created with 2 Unchained Twins. Similar to Dingirsu, this is just another way for the deck to interact with untargetable monsters, as you can attack that monster and destroy it with Darius's effect.

Sauge de Fleur is a powerful field destruction monster that the deck can easily take advantage of. You can destroy any monster you control to destroy a card your opponent controls. And as I've mentioned many times, our monster WANTS to be destroyed, so this card just becomes a free removal card and is just another big piece of meat on the field.

However, keep in mind that you can only use Sauge's effect BEFORE using Aruha or Rakea's effect. This is a Spellcaster, so you will be locked out of Sauge due to Rakea and Aruha's Fiend Locks.

Skull Meister is definitely worth mentioning on this list. Being a Fiend-Type, this means it can be re-added by your Link Monsters if they are destroyed.

In the current meta, Meister isn't even that bad! There are a lot of GY-based decks in the format (e.g. Shaddolls and Zombies), so being able to slow them all down with Meister is pretty good.

Needle Ceiling is a mass destruction trap card that we can take advantage of. The deck has easily covered the entire field with monsters, so it is not too difficult to activate the 4 monster requirement for Needle Ceiling.

Dark Hole is another board-clearing card to go second… that we can take advantage of! Do I need to elaborate on this point? You can summon an Unchained Twin then use Dark Hole to clear the board and then just combo the whole thing from there.

Storm is what I consider the Dark Hole of the Spell/Traps side for Duel Links. It's still Limited-1 meaning it will conflict with Bomber Dragon, but that's not a big deal. Going second, you just set up your Spell/Traps and destroy them to get Storm's effect, which gets you out of your opponent's staples while still being able to summon your Unchained Monsters in peace. You can even play a Skill that places a spell on the field to have an extra card to destroy for Storm if you want.

You already know.

Unchained is fundamentally a Control Deck, so just having a good backrow staple will be a huge boost to the deck.

Live/Evil Twin Unchained used to be a popular deck combination in TCG/OCG formats before Unchained got some great Suppoer cards. The Vtuber Twins have given the deck a new Normal Summon card in addition to Rakea, leading to another way to destroy one of the Unchained Spell/Traps. In exchange for Ki-sikil's draw and essentially all of the deck's Tech slots, you get more starters and a stronger Field!

Like Live/Evil Twins Unchained, Evil Eye Unchained is also a viable combo deck. But unlike Live/Evil Twins, the combo deck gets much better with the new support of Unchained. This combo is still viable without Sharvara and Yama, but it is a much slower engine than Live/Evil Twins. The only real synergy between the two decks right now is the upkeep cost of Serziel, Watcher of the Evil Eye . which requires destroying a card you control. However, Serziel and Selene together are still a pretty strong Normal Summon to consider.

The Skill requirement will always work since all our Links are DARK. A free 1500 LP Boost with an extra ATK boost is... kinda OP if you think about it. We've really come a long way since just having Skill LP Boost Alpha and The Ties That Binds.

Fiend's Exchange is a brand new ability added to the game and is a great one for the deck. At the start of the main phase, we can essentially mulligan a Level 5+ Fiend in our hand to exchange for another card in the deck. This removes the most annoying experience of the deck, which is opening Unchained Soul of Disaster , so it will never just be in our hand again.