Hello and welcome to my article about Shaddoll builds and position in the metagame over the formats.

Post Duelist Alliance
After Duelist Alliance hit the shelves the most talked about and hyped deck was Dragon Shaddoll featuring White Dragon Wyverburster and Black Dragon Collapserpent along with Eclipse Wyvern and Dark Armed Dragon as seen at every tournament at that time in Japan. But the hype died down a little bit after the first few events in America went down and Shaddoll was beaten most of the time by Satellarknight and many people also claimed Burning Abyss to be superior to Shaddoll.

All of these claims were shattered in the upcoming YCS´s Madrid and Toronto as both were dominated by Shaddoll, even though the winning deck in Madrid was not the hyped Dragon Shaddoll but an Artifact Shaddoll build. Similarly in Toronto Lightsworn Shaddoll made an standout appearance.

The lists are built to accomplish different things, mostly the Lightsworn Shaddoll is the combo variant of the three as seen from the Soul Charges and Upstart Goblins. Dragon Shaddolls is the aggressive deck, trying to Deal 8000 damage in 1 or 2 turns, indicated by Dark Armed Dragon, Burst Rebirth and 3 Super Polymerization, also the Dragons accomplish that goal by being free special summoned Beaters. Lastly, Artifact Shaddoll is the Control-type, as this deck tries to grind through his opponents resources by destroying their cards basically for free with Artifact Moralltach through Artifact Sanctum.

Differences
The inherent differences in the card Choices dictate the game plan as Artifact Sanctum is almost always better if played defensively as opposed to being played aggressively, on the contrary a Chaos Dragon or Super Polymerization is better on the offense as in the defense. Soul Charge really shines when you got enabler for it to activate it as early as Turn 1 as opposed to having to wait until the mid-game to get a decent field.

Artifact Shaddoll
As you can see in the Decklist the deck only plays 4 Light monsters in Moralltach and Felis, Lightsworn Archer to supplement summoning El Shaddoll Construct and Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning. The numbers on the Shaddolls are different as well in playing 3 Shaddoll Hedgehog and 3 Shaddoll Beast indicating a stronger will to get a fusion as early as possible while drawing cards with Beast and as most of the games go long especially in the mirror match you want to have the third beast for setting it after summoning a fusion to never let your opponent fuse from the Deck.

Artifact suite: It is better against the rogue decks as you have lower variance and more removal.

Felis as the catchall monster removal through Mathematician, also the milling is the icing on the cake as you might hit Shaddolls.

3 Vanity’s Emptiness as a concession to the mirror match, as you only have so many outs to it while probably getting beaten down by Beast or Moralltach.

Breakthrough Skill as the standout card in the Artifact Shadow Mirror Match and also against Satellar and the Fiends of Burning Abyss.

Shaddoll Core because the mirror match is very resource based and only needing to use 1 monster per Fusion is putting you very far ahead.

Dragon Shaddoll
The Ligh count in this deck is even lower at 3 by playing 2 White Dragon and Eclipse wyvern, the Shaddoll count is also lower in only running every Shaddoll 2 times.

Dragon suite: It is mor geared towards beating the mirror by applying constant pressure through the dragons and crating mor momentum through super poly.

Armageddon Knight is needed in this deck as you want to always have a starting monster and in the best case having the combo with Falco and shadow games or Beast plus Burst rebirth.

Dark Armed Dragon is one of the best cards in this deck as having Mathematician and the Black dragon equals adding it to the hand as well as activating a fusion from the deck lets you summon it directly.

Caius the Shadow Monarch is good here as you almost always have a monster to Special Summon that can be tributed.

Super Polymerization was the card that swung the matchup game 1 the most in the favor of dragon shadow as it creates huge momentum by taking your opponents monster to summon your own, also Satellar can’t win against this card.

Burst Rebirth was another card geared for this decks aggressiveness as it puts extreme pressure on the opponent after getting a beast to the field on his end phase to flip it in your turn.

Lightsworn Shaddoll
This deck has the highest amount of light monsters in between the Variants by playing a whopping 7 but it was cut down at the Shaddolls by only playing 1 Hedgehog and 1 Falco, therefor Chaos Sorcerer is also pretty much always alive. This deck is less reliant on Shaddoll Fusion.

Lightsworn suite: This is also geared better against the rogue decks as Lyla pressures the opponents backrow and it fuels Soul Charge.

Raiden, Hand of the Lightsworn lets you make synchro summons and it also mills a whole 4 cards through the turn to trigger shaddolls and fuel soul charge.

Soul Charge is the only reason this deck existed as it swings the tide so much in your favor if you have it early.

Upstart Goblin is used as this deck is trying to find Soul Charge as soon as possible and it doesn’t need to dish out a lot of damage against non-Shaddoll decks.

After the October F/L List
After the Banlist, everybody knew that Artifact Shaddolls would be top contender to be the deck to beat as it didn’t lose anything important to the list as opposed to the other Shaddoll Variants.
YCS London proved that to be an understatement as Artifact Shaddolls was by far superior to the other Decks and Variants in winning YCS London, even though there was a little bit of a trend set with the 60-Card Control Deck that combined Shadows with Burning Abyss and Artifacts at YCS Dallas.

Post New Challengers
At first the position in the metagame of Shaddoll didn’t seem to change after New Challengers as it got some new tools in El Shaddoll Grysta, El Shaddoll Shekhinaga and El Shaddoll Fusion. However, the Turn 1 plays are best start of Burning Abyss and Qliphort is currently so much better than the best start of Shaddolls, that it felt like fighting an uphill battle. Fire Lake of the Burning Abyss and Qliphort Scout are so strong. The results of the latest YCS in Anaheim speak the same language. The reason why Shaddoll might still be a strong contender at the upcoming YCS Milan is that there is no defined build of the deck in this format yet, as it can be so diverse and matched up or teched with so many things, therefor the best build might as well arise in Milan switching the odds again in Shaddolls favor.

Currently the builds most played the most are Dragon Shaddoll and Artifact Shaddoll. The reason being the new Fusion Spell as it nicely fits the role of the missing 2 Super Poly in Dragon Shaddoll as OTK enabler or by pushing through substantial damage pretty quickly, very important against Qliphort. Also the Dragons are nice to fuse away for Shaddoll Fusion, then grabbing another and then using El Shaddoll Fusion by using the other Dragon. Artifact Shaddoll was never counted out as it has many disruptive cards against Qliphort in the form of Artifact Ignition, Artifact Sanctum and Double Cyclone and the Fusion helps mitigate drawing too many Artifacts or Felis. Right now it is imperative to play Felis as you need the option to Synchro Summon Black Rose Dragon off of Mathematician against Qliphort. The current trend we are seeing is the revival of the Quick-Play Spells, such as Book of Moon and Enemy Controller.

I hope you enjoyed this little recollection about the different faces of Shaddoll.

And remember, play fair or go home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrik Rieder is a Player for United Gosus and has been a member since 2012. For more information on Patrik check out his member profile.