With the special Exodia event happening in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, the focus is on building decks to summon the Forbidden One as quickly as possible. And while those decks will be rampant in the special PVP tournament, duelists may want to consider building decks to defeat Exodia.
The current format favors the Exodia decks because of the “Grandpa’s Cards” ability that puts the five pieces of Exodia in your deck, but you can still play other decks to counter this strategy. Of course, you can use your own Exodia deck and then it’ll be a race to pull all five cards, but these other deck ideas can completely nullify Exodia strategies in Duel Links.
MILL/DECK OUT DECKS
The first and most obvious deck to use to counteract Exodia are those that focus on discarding cards from your opponent’s deck. There are plenty of cards in Duel Links to mill through decks, including Warm Worm and the Conscription trap card. With the drawing power of Exodia decks, if you go all-in to mill their decks, you can get to the bottom very quickly.
However, by discarding cards to the graveyard from the deck, you run the risk of having your opponent draw the five pieces quicker, or possibly discarding the pieces to the graveyard for them to use Backup Soldier and get them into their hand.
This is probably the weakest of the counter-Exodia strategies, but it can still be viable if you use the cards correctly.
HAND CONTROL DECKS
There aren’t too many cards in Duel Links that let duelists discard from the opponent’s hand. While it’s unfortunate, controlling your opponent’s hand is a great way to ensure they don’t get the five pieces of Exodia in their hand.
Cards like Mefist the Infernal General (found in Valkyrie’s Rage set) and Decayed Commander have effects that discard from the opponent’s hand. While there aren’t many cards to help you with this strategy, if you can get one of the two monster cards mentioned before (especially Mefist) you can control the board and what cards your opponent draws.
BEATDOWN DECKS
The most consistent decks to take down Exodia decks are the Beatdown decks, or decks that summon strong monsters quickly to lower your opponent’s lifepoints to zero before they know what hits them.
There are plenty of strong three-star and four-star monsters, like Warrior Dai Grepher and Jerry Beans Man, that swarm the field and take your opponent’s lifepoints out.
Rex and Mako Tsunami decks are very popular, with their abilities that summon field spells that can raise their monsters’ attacks. But since the “Grandpa’s Cards” ability is the only ability used, those decks don’t have much of a place in this format. Still, you can try them out with either Jurassic World or Umi in your deck.
Those are the three strategies all duelists should try if they don’t want to play Exodia decks during the special PVP tournament. We also want to know your favorite strategy to take down Exodia decks. Sound off in the comments section below.
