How to Build a Yu Gi Oh! Water Deck

Last Updated: August 9, 2021

A Water Deck could be one of the most supported deck types in Yu-Gi-Oh!. It is very versatile with a number of playing styles. This guide:

Will show how to build a WATER deck in all its forms
Help you when you want to change your WATER deck up a bit.
Give you good strategies in the fray of a duel
Inform you of many useful WATER monsters
Show you useful combos in your deck building

Steps

1
Buy a SD4 (Structure deck 4 Fury From The Deep). It has most of the cards you need for a water deck; for example, Levia-Dragon Daedalus
2
From your Starter deck, it is highly recommended you use all 3 of your Mother Grizzly and A Legendary Ocean. You can use your Levia-Dragon - Daedalus, Codarus, or both(Codarus is a card upcoming in Absolute Powerforce). At least 1 is recommended. Depending on the number of the above 2 cards you include, add in some Forgotten Temple of the Deep, also in Absolute Powerforce. This will count as "Umi" for Daedalus' and Codarus' effects.

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3
Find cards that will boost any WATER deck such as Warrior of Atlantis, a versatile card you could use to search out "A legendary Ocean", and Aqua Spirit, a Special Summon monster with decent ATK and a good Control Effect. The number of Aqua Spirit(s) should vary depending on your type of water deck, but you should always have 3 Warrior of Atlantis.
- WATER decks can be used in all 3 general deck strategies: Beatdown, Control or Combo. Choose what type your WATER deck will be.
4
If you choose Beatdown, get some High ATK Level 5 WATER monsters like Giga Gagagigo and Terrorking Salmon, which can be summoned without tribute from A Legendary Ocean. Use High ATK level 4 WATER monsters as well like Gemini Lancer, Abyss Soldier and Blizzard Dragon, although it has a Control Effect it still has High ATK. It's OK and actually encouraged for your Beatdown Deck to have a few Control elements and vice versa. Add in 1 or 2 Amphibious Bugroth MK-3, Mermaid Knight, and Star Boy. Use Spell cards that will help with Attacking or Swarming like Big Wave Small Wave or Hydro-Pressure Cannon (which will work with Level 4s from A Legendary Ocean). Generic Destruction Trap cards like Mirror Force and Sakuretsu Armor are recommended.
5
If you choose Control, get cards like Gora Turtle, Maryokutai, B.E.S. Crystal Core, Nightmare Penguin and Penguin Soldier, which will all help you control the field and remove opponent's monsters. Add in 1 or 2 Amphibious Bugroth MK-3, Mermaid Knight, and Star Boy, although this deck will have less of these monsters than the Beatdown deck. Since most of these cards will be Low Level and Low Attack, use at least 2 Salvage, 2 Aegis of the Ocean Dragon Lord, and 1 Hydro Pressure Cannon. Use Gravity Bind and/or Level Limit Area B which is a must for Control Decks. Keep in mind Level Limit is Limited and Gravity Bind is Semi-Limited.
6
If you choose Combo, this means that you heavily rely on Levia-Dragon - Daedalus' and Codarus' Effects. In this deck, use a high number of either or both of them. If you have mostly Codarus' in your deck, then you want Low-Level Support Cards like Salvage and Mother Grizzly to search it out. If you have mostly Levia Dragon, use Big Wave Small Wave to summon it easier and Aegis of the Ocean Dragon Lord to protect your weaker monsters from his effect. And if you have AT LEAST 2 Levia-Dragon - Daedalus, add in an Ocean Dragon Lord - Neo-Daedalus, NO MORE than 2 because he is a "dead draw". Use 3 Forgotten Temple of the Deep, and 1 or 2 Pseudo Space to copy A Legendary Ocean.
7
Even if you only plan to use a Beatdown or Control-centered deck, read steps #5 - 7 to get more ideas for your deck. WATER decks are very versatile in this way and can change their playing style to fit the situation.
8
It can be a good idea to collect "Shark" cards from the new show. Shark uses a variety of strong level 3 monsters to Xyz summon. Rank 3 monsters are currently the most populated, with 7, so you have plenty of options! However, the only two water Xyz monsters are Submersible Carrier Aero Shark and Leviathan Dragon.

Community Q&A

Question

What if I can't find Yu-Gi-Oh! cards in stores anymore?

Community Answer

You can go online and buy some cards. Check eBay or Amazon. This is good because you can often select the specific cards that you want instead of relying on chance.
Question

Are there more deck tutorials?

Community Answer

You bet - check out Make a Yu Gi Oh Mill Deck, Build a Dragon Deck in Yu Gi Oh!, and Make a Defensive Yu Gi Oh! Deck. You can find more if you type Yu Gi Oh in wikiHow's search bar.
Question

If my opponent uses a barrier statue deck, what should I do?

Community Answer

If you have the Legendary Fisherman, use it to special summon the Legendary Fisherman III and use Black Pendant to increase the ATK.

Warnings

Remember, just because a card supports WATER monsters or Umi, doesn't make it good. One example is Deep Sea Warrior, a horrible card. Make your deck close to 40 cards, if possible.

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Try not to use too many cards to boost attack, instead use more cards like Penguin Soldier or Nightmare Penguin. Normally a water deck depends on abilities to control the opponent or remove their cards, that is why A Legendary Ocean is used more for it's level-decreasing ability and the ATK boost is only a nice side-effect.

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One big mistake most Beginner duelists do is they use a structure deck as-is and don't edit it. It is bad with Structure deck 4 because it only has 1 Levia-Dragon - Daedalus and 1 Neo-Daedalus. Do NOT use Neo-Daedalus if you only have 1 Levia Dragon in your deck. He can only be summoned by contributing Levia Dragon (Some Neo-Daedalus in the structure deck are misprints, find the real effect at yugioh.wikia.org). If you draw him when you don't have Levia Dragon, he is useless until you get a Levia-Dragon.

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Organize the cards in your WATER deck by Monster, Spell and Trap and see the Monster to Spell/Trap ratio comes close to 1:1. There should be slightly more spells than traps in this deck.

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Always be sure you have an empty or bad hand before you use Neo-Daedalus's ability. It can still help even if your opponent has a lot of Life Points left because the chances are, whatever your opponent draws won't help him and you can always summon other monsters to attack. But if you have a lot of good cards in your hand use those first.

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Organize the cards in your WATER deck by these categories: Spell/Trap removal or prevention, Monster removal, Special Summoning, Monster protection, Spell/Trap protection, searching, Monster/spell/trap recovery from graveyard, High ATK/ATK boosters, attack protection/prevention, tribute monsters, Low-level monsters. There is no set ratio for these categories, this just helps you organize your deck better and decide which cards to add/remove.

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When deciding if a card is good for a WATER deck, ask yourself these questions:
- Does it help my other cards?
- Does it center around my style of playing?
- Do other cards in my deck help it/strengthen it/protect it?
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