There exists a game that transports you back to your childhood where you can duel with your precious Blue Eyes White Dragon once again. Do you remember the joy of opening packs you purchased with quarters and dimes from Walmart and unveiling your Toon World and Swords of Revealing Light? You can relive these nostalgic feelings with the popular game, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.

Over the years, we’ve been blessed with a number of different Yu-Gi-Oh games for the Nintendo DS and Gameboy, but none of them have scratched the itch like Duel Links. Nothing does it quite like Duel Links with the total comprehensive Yu-Gi-Oh experience that it provides.

There are so many things done right by this game, such as the relatively non pay to win system, the PvP experience, and artwork. For those of you who haven’t played Yu-Gi-Oh in the past and are just now getting into it; you can experience the same joy as the rest of us. You’ll come to know the same joy as the veterans to the franchise by playing this game.

One big problem is that none of us know what deck to play after we download the game and open it up. There are many new archetypes and dueling styles that you may be unaware of, so scroll through this helpful guide that’ll show you the top 5 Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links decks for beginners!

5. Dark Magician

You’ll love this deck if you’ve heard of the illustrious Dark Magician. As a beginner you can actually play this beautiful deck in a competitive setting which is great fun. You will run three Dark Magicians in one deck along with a Dark Magician Girl and Black Luster Soldier. A real blast to the past if you’ve ever played Yu-Gi-Oh before.

I play this deck and find myself up in the ranks of “Legend” sometimes while just messing around. You can fusion summon your “The Dark Magicians” and Xyz summon your “Ebon High Magician” quite easily and wreck some havoc on the Duel Links board.

Key Features

Simple: The Dark Magician deck is quite simple to figure out and your Grandma could probably play it seamlessly within eighteen minutes flat. The combos are not very complicated and you can summon your Dark Magicians easily with Magician Navigation, Eternal Soul, and Dark Magical Circle. It’s so simple to populate your board with two or three Dark Magicians that you might decide against it surprisingly often.

Affordable: This deck is also quite affordable at about 40k gems. You shouldn’t have trouble obtaining most of the cards in it besides your last two Magician Circle. You can get your three Dark Magicians from the Yagi Yumi starter deck, a Yami Yugi drop, ranked duels tickets, or other various tickets.

Fun: There’s nothing like summoning Dark Magician after Dark Magician and pretending you’re Yami Yugi from the anime. If you believe in the heart of the cards you’ll be able to sink many opponents into the shadow realm with your magicians.

Dark Magician deck list:

Main deck:

Chronicle Magician (x3)

Dark Magician Girl (x1)

Black Luster Soldier (x1)

Dark Magician (x3)

Pot of Duality (x1)

Dark Magic Circle (x3)

Illusion Magic (x1)

Warning Point (x1)

Compulsory Evacuation Device (x2)

Magician Navigation (x1)

Eternal Soul (x3)

Extra deck: 

Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon (x2)

The Dark Magicians (x2)

Volofergines, the Darkest Dragon Doomrider (x1)

Ebon High Magician (x1)

Ebon Illusion Magician (x1)

Imduk the World Chalice Dragon (x1)

4. Blue Eyes

If you’ve ever heard the word Yugioh then you’ve probably heard of Blue Eyes White Dragon; or Blue Eyes for short. You can get a Blue Eyes card more easily if you play as Seto Kaiba in the game because it is his signature card. He’s the rich guy who goes around intimidating people with his big blue dragons.

You can get a few of the necessary cards from the Blue Eyes structure deck which will run you 1,000 gems. A structure deck is always a perfect starting choice for Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links beginners because of the low-cost and how easy they are to get. You can collect the cards for the Blue Eyes deck from the card trader, random boxes, and character drops.

The goal here is to summon your Blue Eyes White Dragon cards as quickly as possible. This can be accomplished using cards like The White Stone of Ancients or Monster Reborn. Use your big blue dragon’s massive attack power to demolish your opponent's board.

Key Features

Upgradeable: The base cards of the Blue Eyes deck are really easy to obtain and you can start playing the deck while you’re lacking some cards; you can even play with only one Blue Eyes. As you keep playing, you can upgrade the deck continuously and add a variety of support cards.

Simple and powerful: There are no fancy tricks or illusions with the Blue Eyes deck. It’s all about overwhelming power and some straightforward monster effects. A beginner can focus on the fundamentals of the game rather than overwhelm their brain and have it explode or anything unfortunate like that.

Blue Eyes deck list:

Main deck:

Deep-Eyes White Dragon (x1)

Blue-Eyes Abyss Dragon (x2)

Blue-Eyes Alternative White Dragon (x2)

Blue-Eyes Solid Dragon (x1)

Effect Veiler (x1)

The White Stone of Ancients (x2)

Dragon Spirit of White (x1)

Sage with Eyes of Blue (x3)

Blue-Eyes White Dragon (x3)

Monster Reborn (x1)

The Melody of Awakening Dragon (x3)

Extra Deck:

Blue-Eyes Twin Burst Dragon (x1)

Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon (x2)

Stardust Spark Dragon (x1)

Michael, the Arch-Lightsworn (x1)

Azure-Eyes SIlver Dragon (x2)

Sun Dragon Inti (x1)

3. Red Eyes

You can find most of your core Red Eyes cards in the Red Eyes structure deck. Again, structure-deck based decks are a great choice for beginners because of how easy it is for you to obtain the cards and therefore a proper deck. These decks will carry you pretty far into the game as well; even King of Games is achievable with a Red Eyes deck.

This deck is a bit expensive compared to the other decks on this list, but if you’re into the Red-Eyes Black Dragon (said in Joey Wheeler twang) it’s a viable option for you as a beginner.

Your Red Eyes deck will be centered around your Red-Eyes Slash Dragon UR card. Its attack power brings you happiness and it will protect your other cards at the same time. You will want to run three Black Metal Dragons to use as equip cards to bolster your monsters’ attack power to new heights.

Key Features

High attack power: Let’s be honest, we all love a high attack power in Yu-Gi-Oh. It’s fun to win games just from the sheer number attached to your card’s attack attribute, overpowering your opponent's attack position monsters. Beginners tend to like high attack power, I’ve gotten a few of my friends into Duel Links and they could attest to that.

Synergy: Another great thing that the Red Eyes deck helps beginners with is learning the synergy of cards and understanding the different card interactions. Things such as attaching equip cards like the Black Metal Dragon and using Red-Eyes Fusion for fusion summoning.

Graveyard Understanding: This deck has an extensive usage of the graveyard which is a good way for beginners to become accustomed to these types of plays. Some beginners might not even know that you can summon things from the graveyard or purposefully send them there.

Red-Eyes deck list:

Main deck:

Red-Eyes Black Meteor Dragon (x3)

Gearfried the Red-Eyes Iron Knight (x1)

D.D. Crow (x1)

Black Metal Dragon (x3)

Red-Eyes Black Dragon (x3)

Forbidden Droplet (x1)

Silver’s Cry (x2)

Piercing the Darkness (x1)

Red-Eyes Fusion (x1)

Enemy Controller (x1)

Red-Eyes Insight (x2)

Swing of Memories (x1)

Red-Eyes Fang with Chain (x2)

Necro Fusion (x1)

Return of the Red-Eyes (x2)

Extra deck:

Borreload Furious Dragon (x1)

Meteor Black Comet Dragon (x1)

Red-Eyes Slash Dragon (x1)

Number 74: Master of Blades (x1)

Voloferniges, the Darkest Dragon Doomrider (x1)

Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon (x2)

Linkuriboh (x1)

2. Lunalight

The Lunalight deck is basically free to play at 13.5k measly gems to scrape everything together. With this deck, you can counter many of the current meta decks even as a beginner duelist like yourself.

Lunalights are a fun deck to play and you’ll want to use your boss monsters to bring you to victory. Sabre Dancer threatens to end your opponent's entire Yu-Gi-Oh career with its high attack power and ability to block incoming effects. Polymerization allows you to bring out your heavy hitters and flex your newfound Yu-Gi-Oh duel links skills.

Key Features:

Straightforward: You won’t have to think very hard to play Lunalight, which is a good thing for some of us. It can be a big turn off to jump into a new video game and suddenly have to solve calculus in order to win a round. All you have to do with this deck is summon your juicy fusion monsters such as Cat Dancer and Lunalight Sabre Dancer.

Resilience: It’s difficult to bring down a Lunalight deck even for the most complicated and powerful decks in the game. They are immune to effects and have a high attack power which makes them difficult to deal with.

Pendulum: Regarding the Lunalight deck build that you’ll see in the deck list, you’ll notice that it has a few pendulum monsters in it. Playing Lunalights will allow you as a beginner to understand the pendulum card and playstyle. It’s not all that difficult and it is enjoyable  to play!

Lunalight card list:

Main deck list:

Lunalight Wolf (x3)

Lunalight Kaleido Chick (x3)

Lunalight Blue Cat (x1)

Lunalight Yellow Martin (x2)

Lunalight Tiger (x3)

Lunalight Black Sheep (x3)

Lunalight Crimson Fox (x1)

Lunalight White Rabbit (x1)

Fire Formation - Tenki (x3)

Polymerization (x1)

Storm (x1)

Extra deck list:

Lunalight Leo Dancer (x1)

Lunalight Sabre Dancer (x1)

Lunalight Panther Dancer (x1)

Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Tiger King (x1)

Abyss Dweller (x1)

Cairngorgon, Antiluminescent Knight (x1)

Evilswarm Nightmare (x1)

Knightmare Phoenix (x1)

1. Tenyi

At the moment, many players and myself included would recommend that you just go for a Tenyi deck as a beginner. It is one of the decks that will make you a competitive player right off the bat. If you’re looking to become a really strong player then Tenyi is an amazing choice for you for a variety of reasons.

You’re handed a fat sack of gems upon account creation and completing some initial tasks in Yu-Gi-Oh Duel links. You can use all of your gems to go straight for a Tenyi deck and obtain most of what you need because the deck has an affordable price of 25k gems, and is really simple to build. It’s conveniently considered the number one deck right now on Duel Links Meta; a reliable website with current Duel Links meta data.

You can get most of your Tenyi cards in the World of Barion box. The deck has twenty cards which is what you want to keep your deck limit at as a beginner.

Key Features

Affordable: Tenyi is pretty much considered a free to play deck because you can collect most of the cards with the gems that are given to you in the beginning of the game.

PvP: You can run Tenyi and reach KoG (King of Games) without any problems at all if that’s what you want. You can also banish other human beings to the shadow realm with your Tenyi deck without much effort. If you want to become a serious player you can do so very quickly by playing this deck.

Educational: Tenyi forces you to learn what other decks do in order for you to win your matches. This is mainly because the deck is very reactive which means your combos and moves will be based on what your opponent is doing. You’ll be out here learning the win conditions and strategies of other archetypes because that’s just how you have to play Tenyi.

Tenyi Deck List:

Main deck:

Tenyi Spirit Ashuna (x3)

D.D Crow (x2)

Tenyi Spirit Vishuda (x2)

Tenyi Spirit Adhara (x3)

Tenyi Spirit Mapura (x1)

Tenyi Spirit Nahata (x1)

Tenyi Spirit Shthana (x2)

Flawless Perfection of the Tenyi (x1)

Vessel for the Dragon Cycle (x2)

Heavenly Dragon Circle (x3)

Extra Deck:

Draco Berserker of the Tenyi (x1)

Baxia, Brightness of the Yang Zing (x1)

Shaman of the Tenyi (x2)

Monk of the Tenyi (x3)

Berserker of the Tenyi (x1)