Similar to Bujins, here’s my deck I’ve baked up for Ghostricks. I really like this deck!
Once again, Kyle here with another Monday article! This week I’ve got my take on Ghostricks to go along with the Ghostrick Podcast. I tested a lot of different variants and came up with this as my favorite build. I feel like a lot of people don’t make this deck correctly after playing a lot of people online. I looked up some deck lists on YouTube and around the net, but most people seem to be running 3ofeach.dek, which isn’t particularly great in my opinion, but then again I run 3 of most of them too. There’s also not very many builds floating around post Legacy of the Valiant, so in that respect this deck list is far more unique. (though I don’t expect that to stay true for long once Legacy of the Valiant has been out a bit longer and people get a hold of all the shiny cards, particularly Mary) With all that said, here’s my deck list:
- 3 Ghostrick Stein
- 3 Ghostrick Mummy
- 3 Ghostrick Jiangshi
- 3 Ghostrick Lantern
- 3 Ghostrick Specter
- 3 Ghostrick Mary
- 1 Debris Dragon
- 2 Crane Crane
- 1 Kinka-Byo
Spells (11):
- 3 Book of Life
- 1 Recurring Nightmare
- 3 Mystical Space Typhoon
- 1 Book of Moon
- 3 Ghostrick Mansion
Traps (7):
- 1 Needle Ceiling
- 2 Mirror Force
- 2 Ghostrick Scare
- 2 Ghostrick-Go-Round
Extra Deck (15):
- 1 Scrap Dragon
- 1 Stardust Dragon
- 1 Black Rose Dragon
- 1 Ancient Fairy Dragon
- 2 Downerd Magician
- 1 No. 30: Acid Golem of Destruction
- 1 No. 17: Leviathan Dragon
- 3 Ghostrick Alucard
- 3 Ghostrick Dullahan
- 1 Slacker Magician
What’s kind of weird about this deck is it really has no set combos except for the blatantly obvious things. There’s of course summoning Mummy, which earns you an extra normal summon of a Ghostrick which then allows you to XYZ for Alucard, or other easy things like Crane Crane makes Alucard; all of the things are kind of in the “no duh” category. What I mean to say is that the deck has no set course of action and relies almost completely on the situation of the duel, which I like a lot. It’s not like most decks where turn one you just do the auto pilot play that you always do, which eventually leads to your auto pilot goals. An example being a deck like Constellars; the deck desires turn one to make Pleiades and then eventually M7 and more Pleiades practically devoid of the opponent’s deck or strategy. Ghostricks course of action is almost 100% reliant on the opponent’s plan of action since a majority of the deck’s cards are reaction based. That being said, this deck becomes very difficult to wield if you’re prone to auto-pilot decks.
So, on the topic of general deck principles, Ghostricks really aim to play a control game through stall-type means. Don’t expect to get incredible setups in the first few turns and play “break me” like other control decks like Dino-Rabbit or Six Samurais. This deck play in a strange fluid manner aiming to interrupt and halt the opponent’s pushes while not losing any advantage in the early game while amassing advantage under the safety of Ghostrick Mansion. Once sufficiently setup, slowly continue to control haul by flipping opponent’s monsters face-down to be picked off by Alucard, the deck’s ace.
In most decks, if you have an extra monster that is very effective you’ll run a maximum of two of it in the extra. This is totally different for Ghostricks! Ghostricks are heavily reliant on Alucard and Dullahan and are extremely unlikely to be able to win without them in a competitive environment. The deck almost always wants to summon both of the two if anything because you don’t lose any advantage for doing so because of their recursion effects.
Back to how the deck I built specifically works. My build is reliant on 2 cards in most instances: Ghostrick Scare and Ghostrick-Go-Round, the latter more so. Go-Round is the cornerstone of this decks control. In combination with it and Alucard any monster that is not a Token can be dealt with because even if a monster has a resilient effect, while face-down it can still be destroyed by anything. (Tokens of course cannot be flipped face-down. Curse you Ronin Raccoon, you plagued my testing!) Alucard also protects the other monster you’ll be flipping face-up and down with Go-Rounds effect with his non-attacking effect, making the lock quite difficult to break. The lock down is increased by a Dullahan, making Alucard almost impossible to destroy by battle, forcing the opponent to destroy it by other means, which will in the end activate its recursion perpetuating the lock down.
Specific card choices: Ghostrick-wise. I maximized all of the best level 3 Ghostricks. 3 Jiangshi should be standard in every Ghostrick build pretty much no matter what. Mummy has high attack so you can win faster and more easily facilitates the Alucard lock down. Stein gives you cards that win you the game as soon as he inflicts battle damage. Yeti, Skeleton and Ghoul are all not very good or require the deck to built around them to thrive, and even in that case I would assume those decks to be inconsistent.
I run none of the level 2’s. I contemplated 1 Witch just because I thought I might want to search it some times, but Scare and Go-Round completely invalidate its existence. The other level 2’s, Yuki-onna and Nekomusume are bad cards under most circumstances I can think of.
I run all of the Level 1’s in 3 except Jackfrost. Once again, flipping opponent’s monsters face-down is invalidated by the power of Scare and Go-Round, making Jackfrost obsolete. If I ever need more flipping, I’ll simply add more Scare or Go-Rounds into the deck before I add Jackfrost or Witch. Mary is the least important. It’s only real importance is making me open with Jiangshi more consistently. After I’ve gotten my first Jiangshi, I usually invest the remainder of my Mary’s into making Dullahans. On that note, it is very worth it to consolidate your level ones into Dullahan, even when it requires normal summoning, especially beside a Jiangshi since you’ll have 3 Ghostricks on board before XYZ summoning allowing you to search a level 3. Dullahan can backwards toolbox any monster and makes your opponent waste cards on it, when in actuality it’s a floater. Dullahan eats up cards like Mirror Force, Bottomless Trap Hole (it can half its own attack in response), Torrential and other more deck specific cards. Lantern and Specter make a really reliable stall core, I am particularly fascinated with Specter and its ability to maintain advantage and field presence while also thinning your deck, it is incredibly powerful despite its underwhelming effect when read.
Non Ghostrick stuff. 3 MST is mandatory for this deck in my opinion. Why I think this is because the deck literally has no natural answers to continuous spells and traps. Once a card like Messenger of Peace, Skill Drain, Macro Cosmos, Royal Decree or any other devastating card is on the field, a Ghostrick deck’s only answer is MST or Black Rose/Scrap Dragon (whom only happen once in a blue moon anyways). It’s also really nice versus Fiendish Chain, which is ever popular at the moment and versus opposing field spells. For those who don’t know, here’s a quick ruling:
Via game mechanic at a field spell’s resolution it destroys the opponent’s field spell, but it also reacts similarly to a continuous spell or trap in that if it’s not on the field at resolution none its effects resolve, including the destruction mechanic. That means if you have a field spell on the field, you opponent activates a field spell and you chain MST targeting their field spell your field spell will stay on the field because the opponent’s field spell isn’t face-up to resolve your field spell’s destruction at its effect resolution. Hope that makes sense.
Other card: Book of Life. This card is the best, I don’t see why more people aren’t running this. Zombie Master is complete poodoo in comparison. The application for Book of Life is obvious, it revives any of the 3 Zombies in the main: Jiangshi, Stein and Mummy. This puts a Ghostrick face-up without normal summoning meaning you can normal summon a Ghostrick from your hand without setting it first. This is especially good with Mummy since it can activate some larger combos depending on what’s in your hand. It also has the added bonus of banishing a card from the opponent’s graveyard, which is a wonderful asset to have in the main deck versus graveyard reliant decks. This can really help against things like Dark Worlds, Fire Kings, Bujins and a plethora of other decks. As an added bonus you can bring back a Alucard as well, which you think you be bad, but Alucard will still add a card back from your grave to the hand when he dies and still protects your other monsters from attacks, and you can summon a Downerd on top of him if necessary anyways.
Recurring Nightmare is similar but allows for more advantage. Recurring Nightmare adds back 2 0 DEF DARK monsters from your graveyard to your hand. This includes Stein, Mummy, Lantern and Specter. (you can also put a Dullahan back into the extra, if that matters) It’s debatably more powerful than Book of Life, but it requires a lot more time to setup and the advantage gained can’t immediately be put to use like Book of Life, thus I only run 1. Early game its a damper on your plans to open more than one of this card because you plays quickly become limited, but early game its much easier to use Book of Life. That being said, I’d still love to fit a 2nd copy of Recurring Nightmare back into the deck.
The weird monsters: Crane Crane, Debris Dragon and Kinka-Byo. Crane Crane is fairly obvious, his only purpose is to make Alucard in a pinch, and is more reliable than Tour Guide. Crane ensures you have a Ghostrick in the graveyard and doesn’t require in deck monsters which is kind of a liability as far as this deck is concerned since it has no way to remedy drawing your Tour Guide targets in any way. You could simply run 2 Tour Guides, but that lowers the amount of uses to 1, when running 2 Cranes allows you to use it twice.
Kinka-Byo is pretty much the same thing as Crane except for the Dullahan, except it retains a bit more versatility. Frequently your level 1’s just lie around on the field, be it Specter or Lantern, from your opponent’s turn, meaning you can summon Kinka-Byo, revive another level 1 Ghostrick then XYZ with the 2 Ghostricks for Dullahan and then let Kinka-Byo return to hand. Worst case scenario you can use it for the XYZ material too, which isn’t all that bad either.
Debris Dragon is a little more strange. I haven’t tested it all that much either, but in theory it’s sound. It still has the potential of being dropped in the future though. The simple things Debris can do, revive Jiangshi or Crane Crane to make a level 7 Synchro. Not too spectacular or bad either. Black Rose is always a nice option to keep in your holds in case the opponent overextends too much without OTKing you. Ancient Fairy Dragon is a bit of beast in this deck. It can get rid of the opponent’s field spells to get your own, which is great. It can also special summon Ghostricks from your hand to allow you to normal summon Ghostricks face-up and more quickly XYZ summon but takes away your battle phase, which you can afford because you usually don’t enter the battle phase until much later in the game. You can also make level 8 Synchros in more technical situations. This involves you having a a level 1 or level 3 on the board prior to Debris Dragon’s summon and reviving the opposite giving you Debris a level 1 and a level 3 making 8. Stardust is pretty nice for the stall game since you put a lot of cards on the board in this deck and it protects your setup. Scrap Dragon is just for problem solving in worst case scenarios.
Both Kinka-Byo and Debris have a high potential of being cut from the deck if they don’t pan out. They are my current test subjects as of writing this.
Extra deck wise, Downerd Magician is really good because you can put it on top of exhausted Alucards or Dullahans and when Downerd Magician detaches them or itself is removed from the field you still get the effect of Alucard and Dullahan to recur from the graveyard. Downerd also allows you to side deck Deck Devastation Virus and Eradicator Epidemic Virus because Downerd is DARK and comes out with 2500 ATK if you’ve detached only 1 material from the XYZ it was put upon.
Acid Golem is for Skill Drain and Leviathan is for the necessary high attack you may need immediately of a Crane Crane play in a pinch situation that can’t be done by going to main phase 2 and summoning Downerd. Slacker is also a kind of worst case scenario kind of monster.
Feel free to ask me any questions about the deck, I’m always checking up on comments (the site actually send me email notifications when you comment on my articles), so I’ll respond as quickly as I can. Also, feel free to ask me anything random too.
QOTW? Question of the Week:
Ghostricks have a Rank 3 Zombie to go along with their level 3 Zombies and a Rank 1 Fiend to go along with their level 1 Fiends, so it stands to reason they’ll receive a Rank 2 XYZ that is a Spellcaster. With that, the XYZ monsters tend to follow the trends of the monsters being used for them: Zombies have the powerful game advantage making effect, the Fiends have battle phase tricks and lastly the Spellcasters all flip things face-down. With that let’s assume we’ll be seeing a Rank 2, DARK, Spellcaster XYZ that has an effect based on flipping things face-down. What kind of effect would you like to see? What other Ghostrick monster with its proposed effect would you like to see to facilitate its summon? What effects do you think this kind of card would have on a deck like Prophecy?
Written by: Kyle
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So I’m reading for two minutes and I see you misunderstand the deck. MAKE ALUCARD. No. Maintain card economy and repeatedly poke damage, search scare and call game? Yes. I run 3 Alucard because it’s a nice utility to have, but you shouldn’t find yourself going into Alucard every game if you’re playing the deck correctly.
My suggestions
– 2 / 3 Specter (Not great post – lval)
– 2 Crane Crane
– 1 Debris
– 1 Mummy
+ 2 Jackfrost (Really nice card)
+ 1 Witch (Need those flips!!!)
+ 1 Ghoul (not needed, but nice to have: also sets up virus plays)
A trap lineup change
Really, that last one’s important. In a competitive environment, with triple MSTs and otherwise S/T removal flying about everywhere, Go-Round is really just plain bad outside of Kaiser Ghostricks, and continuous traps are only more vulnerable. Definitely max out on Scare before you consider Go-Round. Vanish is also very important, for making pushes both big and small AND for keeping Mansion safe, which is hugely important since it suffers from the same issues as Roleshift, yet is far more core to the strategy. To reinforce that, I recommend trap stun over MST, it at least makes a 1 – 1 with bottomless, mirror force, etc. Outside of that, it’s important for Ghostricks to be reactive. There aren’t too many swarm decks dominating the meta right now outside of Geargia (who run trap stun, also), with Bujins going so far as to consider Kaiser. Therefore, I recommend dropping Needle Ceiling, although one copy may not be a huge issue. Staples (bottomless, compulse, black horn) are needed here. I run only 7 spells: triple Mansion, triple Concealing Light, 1 Terraforming
My apologies. I forgot to mention that since you don’t like Debris or Byo as much, I recommend a switch to Masked Chameleon. My own suggestions aside, you’ve twelve 0 Def monsters there compared to 5 for Debris, and you can run two. It means that for every Chameleon you draw, you’ve six yard options, mathematically speaking. It’s much nicer than just getting Jiangshi back.
And MSTs can still be sided.
Since you have attempted to spark debate, I am obligated to reply.
Specter is one of the best Ghostricks the deck has, so I have no reason to not be running it. It thins the deck so you draw into more spells and traps and facilitates Dullahan which I find an essential piece to the deck. After a lot of testing I have found it to be the Ghostrick I search first with Jiangshi, unless I already have one in hand. As I said in the article, its effect seems underwhelming but it’s wildly effective. It allows you to stall the opponent’s resources without using any advantage while still maintaining field presence. It is actually more effective with the release of lval because of the existence of Dullahan which Specter facilitates the summon of, and Dullahan facilitates to recursion of Specters. This creates drawing loops that cost you nothing and removes opponent’s options.
I never wanted Witch ever in testing, it is simply outclassed completely by Go-Round and Scare. I tested 1 just so I could search it, but I would always search all of the Level 1’s first. When I drew it it made my hand bad because it was never worth summoning over any of the other Ghostricks unless my hand was already bad, thus making it worse. It’s also level 2 so it doesn’t combo with anything. Until I have a reason to make Rank 2 XYZ, the card is not as helpful as other basic Ghostrick cards. The same can be said for Jackfrost. I haven’t had any trouble flipping my opponent’s monsters face-down in my current build so I’m really not looking for the extra dead draws of Frost and Witch which only provide a service I do not desire.
While you could argue that MSTs are flying around, it’s unlikely the opponent will see more than 2 in a game, and in most cases only 1. The opponent inevitably targets the Mansion when destroying cards meaning Go-Round is likely to stick around. While yes, since it’s continuous that makes it vulnerable to MSTs, the fact that it’s continuous, and to that affect infinitely usable, is why it’s so powerful. If the opponent doesn’t have the MST for it, you’re going to have a lot of control over them. I personally prefer it over Scare, but because Go-Round is only in the Battle Phase I consider Scare necessary. I don’t want to max out on Scare because multiple Scares in the opening hand doesn’t help at all since you can’t use both at the same time. With two I regularly draw 1 or can search it with Stein. Go-Round was always fantastic when drawn and I didn’t see it enough at 1.
I feel like Crane Crane is better than Masked Chameleon for this deck, so I don’t know why I’d cut Crane to make room for Chameleon? Chameleon is pretty much a worse Debris for this deck since you can’t summon other cards after using Chameleon. Chameleon only has access to 5, 7 and 8’s for Synchros. 5’s are largely irrelevant. The 7’s that are desirable can all be summoned by Debris more effectively, and the same is said for 8’s. The only Synchro I really like for this deck is Ancient Fairy Dragon, the rest are their just because the extra has space for them.
MST is more important than Trap Stun because the deck literally CANNOT remove a face-up spell or trap from the field otherwise. If the opponent has Skill Drain, Macro, D-Fissure, Kaiser Colosseum or anything similar, Trap Stun is going to look really stupid in this deck, especially since it really doesn’t OTK all that much if ever. This means cards like Skill Drain will simply turn back on again the next turn.
I would agree though that the Needle Ceiling and Kinka would probably be better served as a Bottomless or a Compulsory.
I’m not trying to argue. I’ve been testing Ghostricks for around 6 months and believe me when I say Go-Round is bad unless you have already maxed out on Scares. Its inability to respond to removal, such as bear/gorilla, yamato + centipede, etc. Is horrible
This is why I say side MST. At first you suggest that most only draw 1 MST per duel, then you argue that triple MST will save you more than trap stun? With Heavy gone, huge backrows are more common than ever. Ghostricks cannot be allowed to lose advantage, which is why Stein’s attacks getting through is hugely important, and why your plays just can’t go interrupted. True Ghostricks don’t otk easily (although it is possible), but siding MST and Trap Eater can assist in defeating the aforementioned threats.
I think the argument is not all that relavant, gohst tricks dont matter in the grand scheme of things, they are just another fun deck unless they get a crazy tcg exclusive. But as far as a rank 2 how about its effect is “you can detach 2 xyz materials from this card, flip all face down monsters on the field face up (monsters flipped this way do not have there flip effects activated) and draw 1 card for each. You can only activate this effect once per duel. Could be crazy late game and has synergy with gohst tricks without making flip effect monsters retarted