If you want to take your deck to the next level, you should definitely consider adding staples to your build.
Staples are cards that are good in any situation.
They can fit into any strategy and have very strong effects that can make the difference between winning and losing.
Duelists on a tight budget may find it hard to keep up with the meta, since many of the best plays (in both the main deck and the extra deck) cost dozens of dollars.
There are a lot of cheap but powerful cards that can help people who don’t have a lot of money.
Don’t judge a card by how much it costs. These guys may be cheap, but you’ll see them in a lot of competitive decks.
But strong cards can have a high price tag.
If you want to build a deck but don’t want to spend a lot of money, this list has you covered.
12. Daigusto Emeral
Emeral used to be banned, but now you can only have one copy per deck. Even though he is a Gusto, he can use any two level 4s as fuel.
Emeral’s ATK isn’t great at 1800, but you can remove a material to either bring back a monster from your graveyard that doesn’t have an effect or shuffle three monsters from your graveyard into your deck and draw a card.
Either way, you get the benefit, whether through swarming the field or playing cards from your hand.
Since the effect only uses one material, you can do it again if Emeral lives until your next turn.
11. Cross-Sheep
Sheep is weak, with only 800 ATK, but it can easily link summon any two monsters with different names, even tokens.
From there, when a monster is summoned to a zone Sheep points to, it can use different effects based on the card types it points to.
For example, ritual draws and discards two cards, fusion brings back a level 4 or lower monster from your graveyard, synchro raises your monsters’ ATK by 700, and xyz lowers the ATK of opposing monsters by 700.
All of these are useful, but the fusion ability is usually the best. When you revive a monster, you can link it to a Sheep for an easy link-3 (and keep your fusion monster).
10. Torrential Tribute
Torrential Tribute is a great card to have in your deck if you want to get rid of a lot of monsters at once.
When a monster is created, this trap card goes off. When it does, you can kill every monster on the field.
Even though killing your own monsters might sound like a bad idea, it can be a very powerful thing to do. For example, all Shaddoll monsters have effects that happen when they are sent to the graveyard, and Torrential Tribute is a great way to make these happen.
You can also wait until you have no more monsters on the field and then play this card. In that case, it becomes a 1-sided board wipe.
9. Twin Twisters
Every time a new set comes out, spells and traps get stronger. If you want to win, you’ll need to figure out how to deal with these annoying cards.
Twin Twisters is easily one of the best spell/trap removal cards in the game. You can quickly get rid of two spells or traps from anywhere on the field by discarding a card.
This is about spells and traps that are both face up and face down, as well as field spells. This makes Twin Twisters a very strong tool that should be in any side deck (or three of them).
8. Pot of Extravagance
Yu-Gi-Oh is all about having more cards than your opponent. If you have more cards than your opponent, you’re likely to win the game.
Draw spells are the best way to get more cards in your hand, and Pot of Extravagance is by far the best one for players on a budget because it has been reprinted so many times in structure decks and side sets.
You can draw one card for every three cards you get rid of from your extra deck. You can get rid of 3 or 6 random cards from your extra deck.
If you’re playing a deck that doesn’t care much about the Extra deck (like Dinosaurs, Drytron, or Eldlich, to name a few), this card has no downsides. It’s almost like Pot of Greed!
7. There Can Be Only One
We all know by now that floodgates are strong tools.
This trap card is one of the best floodgates you can get, and cheap players can get it very easily right now.
This trap is always set, and each person can only control one of each type of monster. Many decks rely on synergy between monsters of the same type, which makes this card ridiculously strong against the right deck.
But “There Can Be Only One” also limits you. So you’ll need the right kind of deck to make this card really shine.
I think this card works best in decks that usually only use one monster at a time, like Sky Striker, or in decks that use a lot of different types of monsters, like general pendulum decks.
6. Solemn Judgement
I can’t believe that we live in a time when Solemn Judgement is a cheap staple.
It’s easy to see why Solemn Judgement is one of the best trap cards ever made. Even though paying half of your life points seems like a small price to pay for this card, it’s more than worth it. With Solemn Judgement, you can stop any call, spell, or trap effect.
This will stop almost any danger you can think of.
And since it only takes half of your life points, you can use it even if your life points are low.
5. Gameciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju
In Yu-Gi-Oh, it is very hard to get rid of some monsters.
They won’t be able to be targeted by card effects, and in some cases, all card effects won’t have any effect on them at all.
Kaijus come into play here.
They are some of the best ways to get rid of monsters because they use monsters on your opponent’s side of the field as tributes to call themselves.
Even though this card brings Gameciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju to your opponent’s field, it is the smallest Kaiju, so it is very easy to beat with your own monsters. Who knew that having a bad score could be a good thing?
4. Effect Veiler
Effect Veiler has been used in most competitive decks since it was first printed in 5Ds. It was one of the first hand traps in the game.
You can stop the effects of a monster your opponent controls for the rest of the turn by throwing this card away during their main phase.
This effect works quickly, so you can use it in reaction to a wide range of things.
You can cancel effects that happen when a card is summoned, effects that can be activated at any time, and even effects that happen all the time, like Jinzo’s power to cancel trap cards.
3. Super Polymerization
Fusion casting has been the best way to play for years.
And now that Branded-Despia is a part of the game, it doesn’t look like fusion decks are going anywhere.
Because of this, Super Polymerization is a great card to have in any deck, even if you don’t usually use fusion summons. This card lets you use monsters on either side of the field as materials for a quick fusion summon.
As if that wasn’t powerful enough, Super Polymerization can’t be stopped by the effects of other cards. This makes it almost impossible to stop your super poly fusion summon.
In recent years, there have been a lot of fusion monsters with generic material requirements. For example, Guardian Chimera only needs 3 monsters with different names, so this strong spell card can be used in almost any deck.
2. Dark Ruler No More
What’s better than stopping the effect of a monster?
How about getting rid of all of your opponent’s cards at once?
You can cancel the benefits of every monster your opponent controls with Dark Ruler No More. Also, when this card is played, your opponent can’t use monster effects in answer to it.
The reward is that your opponent takes no damage for the rest of the turn.
This is more than worth it if it means that your opponent’s monsters won’t stop you from playing for your whole turn.
And since Structure Deck: Albaz Strike came out, this card is now a common and a strong addition to the deck of any budget player.
1. Book of Moon
Since Yu-Gi-Oh came out, Book of Moon has been an important card.
Over the years, it has been reprinted many times as a common, rare, and even a hidden rare.
This card has a lot of uses. It lets you quickly change the face of one monster on the field from up to down. So it’s easy to get rid of card effects.
If your opponent uses a card effect to target one of your monsters, all you have to do is use Book of Moon to target one of your own monsters. This means that your opponent’s card effect no longer has a proper face-up target on the field, so nothing happens!
You can also use Book of Moon to do something cool in fight.
You can flip your opponent’s fighting monsters to defense position to stop their attacks, or you can flip your own monsters to defense position to stop yourself from taking any battle damage.
You can do almost anything with Book of Moon, which is why I’d recommend it to any player who wants to improve their deck on a tight budget.
