Transcript [EN]: A Brief Study of Branded.

and welcome to a 20h hour long detailed guide on how to play branded in mastero this video is not a stream fot or a gameplay compilation it is a fully edited and scripted video that is attempting to be the most comprehensive and complete guide to branded that I could possibly create a few months ago I made another video called a short guide to branded a lot of people really liked that guide however I personally have always thought that it was lacking and I knew that I could do better if I put my mind to it so here is a detailed guide to branded this video will cover a lot of the stuff that you can find in other guides and online resources like turn one combos deck lists and example games on the ladder but there's also a lot of time dedicated to things that aren't often covered in other guides like playing around hand traps adapting to specific matchups in-depth discussion about every single card even ones that aren't in the deck lists and advice on how to go second as well there's even some second opinions in here from branded players that are better than myself my intention is to create an informative video for all levels so if you're new to mad and have never read a branded card this video will hopefully give you a solid Baseline to stop practicing from even if most of it is not yet for you and if you're a fellow competitive player aiming for top 10 in the rankings or the dest cups I'm certain that even you could learn something from this video as well so the structure is going to go like this firstly I'll give an introduction to branded as a whole and then I'm going to talk individually about every single branded card including the bad ones as well as every other card that is commonly played in the deck next there will be some example deck lists not just the list that I play but also mist from other players and I'll talk about each one of those in depth then there'll be a big combo section where I go over all the one cut combos the two cut Combos and even some of the three cut combos as well unlike my previous guide where I only covered a handful of comos this time I'll be covering all of them and there'll be a spreadsheet for all of those comos in the description which you can access for free feel free to just take that spreadsheet and lend the comos on your own but you will be missing out on some context and advice on how to play the end boards and also some commentary that I'll give throughout that section on how the different combo lines relate to each other so it would be definitely easier to learn the combos in the video first after that I'll talk about how to play around hand traps when going first and then there'll be a section on what to do when you draw a very powerful hand full of lots of different extenders we'll then do some example hands where we bring the ideas from the combo section and the playing around hand trap section together and will then be an entire section dedicated to the different floodgates that you can play in branded will then be a discussion about the different non-engine cards that you can play in branded so which hand chaps you want which board Breakers how many and why your non- engine is very format dependent and easily outdated so I felt like it was important to dedicate an entire section to it rather than just throwing it into the deck lists and expecting it to be relevant in two or 3 months time there'll be some example games and then also some advice for how to go second with some example games to demonstrate that and then we'll go into detail about various different matchups I've tried to cover as many as I can with an emphasis on meta decks and in particular the Decks that I expect to stay in the game for a long time so that the advice doesn't become outdated after just a few formats there'll be example games for each matchup and I'll be going over how to play each one from the perspective of going first and doing second next I'll spent some time talking about how to build a side deck with brandid and if you're thinking Master doesn't have a side deck so this shouldn't be relevant don't worry about that at explaining when we get there and then the last thing I'll talk about is some obscure Tech choices for Branded and how specifically the end phase Works in detail if you think you know how the end phase Works already I promise you you don't so please check that section out even if you're not that interested in branded overall the structure of this video is designed so that it is as engaging as possible and progresses in a logical order so that if you're watching from start to finish you'll have the easiest time following the explanations that being said 20 hours is a long time so I can't recommend watching this in one setting and not every section is going to be relevant for everyone anyway I tried to put the more optional areas of branded towards the end of the video with the more fundamental things being at the start one more thing I want to say before getting into it is that if it wasn't obvious already there's going to be a lot of yapping from me so get ready to hear this AI voice a lot now with that being said let me give a brief introduction ction to branded branded is the deck that is made by combin all of the fusion support from the Abyssal KS together originally it was referred to as branded desia and then later branded bisti but it's generally now just called branded since the Des beer and besto parts of the deck have gotten smaller the deck is exclusively a fusion Deck with many of the K locking mutant only summoning fusions from the ex but doesn't make the dead weak though as many of branded fusion monsters often very powerful Brandon aims to summon these powerful fusion monsters on turn one especially its main boss Master Mir Jade as well as set up quick effects elect diff Fusion summon again on the Apollo's time the deck excels in Monster removal having many ways to banish monsters and without having to Target or destroy them either the grand game for Branded is very respectable and its ability to break a board with its engine going second is very high spell and chat removal is more limited but it is still pretty easily accessible meaning that branded has pretty well-rounded matchups overall the main weakness of the deck is going second against huge boards with five first descriptions as a strong bolt breaking engine doesn't matter when every one of its Styler cards gets Eng dick also typically plays less hand jaaps and most of the decks which means you're also more often staring down those full combo boards when you choose to play branded rather than other decks the F Point branded is the deck's main Fusion spell granded Fusion the Ley Fusion summon any Fusion moner that Rees Fallen AAL by this material by using exactly two most from hand field or deck as material being able to use moners in the deck as material makes this card obviously super strong which is why accessing this card and resing it is the most important part of branded card also sees that you can't speci a summon moners from the extra deck during the time you activate this card except Fusion moners you could also get to branded Fusion Mark consistently using the Dex May normal Alli by the gesture desia which says if it's normal a special summon you can add a brand SP tra M it to the hand the main monsters you're aiming to summon with Rand fion are ALB on the Branda dragon and L belly in the Searing Dragon both of these cats have a similar effect that being to Fusion summon again when the fusion own specifically they can summon any level eight Alo Fusion Monster the difference between these C is that Alon requires a light monstrous materal whereas lellan requires a dark albon's effect also banishes monsters from the hand field of graveyard as feature material and the belly on his de shuffles monsters and your field are or banishment into the deck the end result of both of these effects though is usually Merit the ice blade Dragon which is I mentioned minute ago is the deck's main boss monster the card requires full and ofas plus one Fusion Synchro exes only monster as material and it is a level eight dark worm with 3,000 attack it has a quick effect to vanish mon on the field by sending water Fusion no so that requires Fallen of elvas as material from your extra de to the Grave yet this is br's main way of disrupting the opponent and you'll be a to set this of almost every game the fusion most yend with mirade all have effects which activate in the graveyard during the end phase of the turno sender and those the facts that you access different kinds of followup depending on which specific one you set this completes the basic game plan of branded you want to firstly access your branded fusion and then use the Fusion to summon miror Jade and then use the miror Jade's banish effect to disrupt the opponent on their turn finally the end base effect that the fusion Master you sent for mirade will give you a follow-up play for turn three the rest of your resources should be used to set up quick play Fusion summons on the opponent's turn it leads to further disruptions alongside your marid and further followup as well of course there's a lot more to it in just that those extra resources add a lot of complications to the game plan and even the cards I mentioned just now have other effects that I didn't even point out but that basic skeleton is present in most of Brandon's games where it goes first so keep this game plan in mind throughout the video as it will help explain why some of the things in branded all the way to AR to me branded is a really interesting deck as someone who has played a lot of different decks over the course of their competitive Jenny I can see that branded is probably the most engaging of all of them it's engaging because of how fun it is and also because of how challenging it is this is obviously down personal preference but brand it is fun to me because of how much play you have on both plays time there's so much to do on your turn one and then so much more to do on the opponent's to as well a lot of band's disruptions put new cards into play rather than just trading for the opponent's cards like other common disruptions this keeps the game more complicated and it makes it feel like you're already creating the disruption rather than just using one it makes you feel like you're piloting the deck rather than just drawing cards red is a combo deck the combo Lang you go for and usely improvised instead of being memorized which means that no two binded combos are ever exactly the same this complexity is also what makes it that challenging with no easy wins of branded since your turn one combo always requires thinking no matter how experienced you are with the deck and there's so much accuracy required in executing your disruptions too the end result of this is that branded is super avoiding when you get good with it complex nature of the games it creates when there's a lot of room to outplay a weaker oppent and to get creative with your own plays as well mastering the deck will let you dominate all the levels of play up until the very top of the competitive scene where the deck makes appearances in the top 10 of dollars cups wcqs as well as the top cuts of community tournaments as well okay so before you get confused this is not a deck list it's just a list of all the cards that I think are relevant for Branded and I'm going to go over all of these individually the reason I want to do it like this instead of just showing a deck list is because when we get to the deck list section I want to talk more about the deck list as a whole the ideas behind them and then compare them to each other rather than having to spend a bunch of time explaining the individual cards in a vacuum instead I'd rather just do that now so that we're all on the page about how these cards work I have here all the cards that are played in branded as well as the cards that sometimes see play and even the cards that don't see very much play at all and I have them arranged into the order that I think makes the most sense for a discussion that's why I'm on Edo Pro by the way since Master do doesn't let you change the order of the cards in your deck list I'm going to discuss the basics of these cards as well as the more advanced stuff and Hope everything in between as well but the one thing I won't do is read the card word for word it's going to be on screen if you want to read it and you won't even need to pause the video since I'll likely be talking for a good Jun of time most of you probably already know the effects of these Cuts anyway and then one more thing I should say before we start is that if you are a complete beginner with branded this section might not make a lot of sense until we start getting pretty far through the list as I will refer to the other cards as I explain each one my advice is to just keep in mind the basic game plan for Branded and how each of these cards can help facilitate it then once we start getting through more of the cards things are going to start falling into place anyway let's start with full and developers this is the CR in the whole deck revols around all of your good fusion monsters acquire this card as material so it stands to reason that the deck doesn't function at all without this it's not something you need to draw though since brand the fusion can just fuse with it from the deck its main use is to be fusion material for Branded fusion and also your other Fusion summoning effects like cesia and branded in red but it is also used all the time for its un Field Effect when it's normal L specious you can discard a card and then fuse itself with a monster on the opponent's field you can't use other cards on your own field field it has to be just the albar and then something on the opponent's board so obviously what you summon with this depends on what mes your opponent has uh but fortunately the ALB fusion monsters have pretty generic materials like I mentioned in the introduction Alon requires albas and any light monster and Rebellion requires albas and any dark monster you could also make Mir directly with elas by using any Fusion Synchro xes or link monster on the opponent's board so basically any extra Deck monster can be fused with alvas to make mirade which means there's very few matchups where your opponent isn't going to have a good monster to fuse with it's nice that your best Target for this is also the easiest to summon but there are also other targets that get used as well like I said albon and lellan are good when the opponent uses lights or darks uh but there's also Titanic lead which could be made of any monster with 2500 or higher attack there's renr which can be made using a beast beast Warrior or winged Beast sanctify can be made with a light spell cter and spr can be made with any effect monster as long as it was special summon that t Elbas can also fuse into generic fusion monsters outside of its archetype dragon dellia and Barlo Furious Dragon other relevant ones there's also the super generic ones too mud dragon and Gora one thing that's cool about alaz but doesn't really ever come up is the fact that he canus with multiple of the opponents monsters at the same time as the only limitation on the effect is that you can't use any more of your own monsters besides alar this doesn't come up much because there aren't really any fusion monsters that are worth playing that have multiple materials like this and is elitus which requires albas and any number of dragon monsters and there saw some play in the past when the extra deck wasn't as tight as it is now and especially during formats with dragon link as you could theoretically fuse a whole Board of dragons away into this there's also pred plant tro verum which requires three dark monsters alaz itself is a dark monster so you can use its effect to fuse away two of your opponent's dark blasters into this again no the extra deck is just too tight these days so I don't think you even consider playing this even if you had a 30 card extra that anyway when you first read Al's effect you might think that it's a really strong way to break a board going second like you can just normal summon this and fuse away your opponent's best monster into a merit dat but in reality most of the time your opponent is going to have ways to stop this the effect can be stopped by any generic negate like apple loser or Baron def flow and it also loses to Common Staples like imperm and vea the effect also doesn't just need to be negated specifically to be stopped you can also just remove the elbaz body from the field and that will effectively negate it since the effect says that you have to use the elbaz as material so destroying it banishing it or bouncing it back to the hand is all going to stop the effect from resolving and then considering that the alar discards for cost and that you had to commit your Norm summon in a deck that already has a super good normal summon it starts to become clearer that normal summoning albas as a board breaker is not actually the crazy solution for going second that it might sound like At first that being said if you do resolve Alba's likeness it can be really strong if you consider what happens when it resolves fusing away a monster into marate means you've already cleared one monster the marriage Aid continues its effect to banish a second monster and then since marriage has 3,000 attack it's pretty likely that it can go onto the battle phase and hit over a third monster as well so it is really good when it resolves which means if you can plan your turn around baiting the opponent's negates with your other cards first and then normal summon and albas later it can be pretty effective what it doesn't change though is that it's still going to use up your normal summon so you won't be able to normal summon something else as part of the bait this is where Fusion deploy deployment comes in deployment is basically emergency teleport for Elbas so you can save your noral sermon for something like Al and still potentially get the board breaking Power of elas Now the other way to use your elz effect is actually even better than as a board breaker and it's easier to resolve too and that is as a disruption on the opponent's turn by summoning Alis is a quick effect through cards like brbr sanctifier and quem you can use this card to dis the opponent and that is in fact one of your main sources of disruption right next to marij J's banish effect something you always want to try to do if you can is to leave an alaz in the graveyard for your opponent's turn so that you can summon it to the field whenever you like and fees away your opponent's most important monster when we get to the combos you'll see that that is something we always try to set up if possible so with all that being said how many alar should you be playing in the day it's obvious that you want some number of copies where should it be one two or three is the question well firstly I don't think anybody ever plays just one your deck is just too Fragile with one a light Breeze is going to render you useless even though technically most of the Tero combos are possible with just what AR it's not good though don't do it the question is really between two copies and three copies so when paired with other certain cards I class can become a very good drill that let you play through stuff like hand traps or an opponent's board quite nicely but on its own it is not a statica or an extender which makes it kind of a brick especially when you go fast where you don't even have the option of using it as a board breaker for this reason some builds of branded have just two copies of alband whereas others have all three one reason you might want to play all three instead is that it's nice to have X access to more copies in a Grind game activating branded Fusion isn't possible if you've already been through all of your alars Fusion duplication is a car that copies branded fusion and would also require an unused elb to resolve for 60 C branded there is a higher chance you going to melt all of your albow with grass if you're playing just two than if you're playing all three and there's also lots of other effects besides brand of fusion that might want an available Albers in your deck like Titanic quen and branded lost it is true that lellan is capable of shuffling back Elbas from the graveyard or from banished into the deck which allows for Brandon's Grind game to be a lot better than it would be otherwise and this definitely helps offset the downside of playing too but it's not ideal to ever be in a situation where you have to resolve lellan first just to then resolve another card which you could have resolved Anyway by just including a third elas in your deck so if I was going to try and put all of that together and answer definitively how many alas you should play I think I'd say that if you're playing 50 to 60 cards you probably want all three copies just to avoid that situation where you maill them all with grass and to ensure that you have enough resources for a grind Doom uh the downside of playing all free is lesson will you play more cards so I probably go as far as saying that in 60 card branded specifically it is a mistake to not play all three and then if you're playing 40 cards I'd likely choose to play just two since this builds a focused on consistency and cutting the third alas is in line with that one in 4y cards you'll feel the downside of playing three copies the most because you'll draw multiple albas more often than if you had more cards in the deck and that one single slot that the third copy takes up is more valuable when you play less Turtle cards as well I wouldn't say it's necessarily a mistake to play three in 40 but I think I'd strongly suggest considering it keep in mind that this is all in general though so that could potentially be a format in the future where there is a specific reason to run a certain amount of albas so moving on to branded Fusion this is the best card in the deck I know I just said that albas is the most important card in the deck but bred Fusion really is the best card in the deck if you ask any other competitive play what makes branded competitive they're probably going to point to this card because it really is the best card in the deck and what makes it so good is that it's just so efficient by sending materials from the deck to the graveyard it means that you don't need to have any of us sets up for this card to be good and when it resolves what you get out of it in the end is quite a lot it's not as much as a snake eye Ash or a nightmare phone or a wapi but it's still quite a lot and then the other part of what makes it really good or one other part of what makes it so good is that once it's resolved your plays split into like two to three different branching paths and each of those branching paths require A disruption from the opponent so if you summon like an albon your opponent might want to use one card to stop the on Field Effect they might want to use a second card to stop the beal rebellion's effect and then they might want to use a third TI to stop the end phase effect of albon in the gradi yet and you could even argue that it forces a fourth card out of the opponent by going to battle phase and attacking over something so it makes it very hard for the opponent to control the situation completely once you resol branded Fusion this is why ash is such a good card against branded because it's the only hand trap that can stop branded Fusion entirely would you resolve branded Fusion no other single hand trap is going to be able to put you off of plays completely you're always going to have something no matter what the hand trap is and it's especially good for going second into boards as well since if your opponent doesn't negate your branded Fusion you're so much more likely to be able to break that [Music] board for [Music] run of fusion is also a foolish burial for lights and darks since the materials for albon and the Bellion are generic which Ms if there's ever a broken light monster or broken dark monster to send render Fusion is a way to do it currently the best way to play rended is just to send your in archetype light monsters and dark monsters anyway but that could change in the future so it is worth remembering so this gu typically summons albon and lellan the most with albon being the more common of the two and then after that it's probably sanctifier that you summoning the next most often most of the time if you're summoning sanctifier it's because your opponent chained mag Max and you don't want to give your opponent a lot of draws both Alon and lellan require giving your opponent two draws with maxi if you want to use their effects to make a marriage a whereas just summoning a sanctifier and passing only gives them wandra there are other situations where you might summon a sanctifier sometimes going second it is important to put a master that can't be targeted on the field this might be important against a stun deck for example or a runic deck and you might also summon it going first when you have a really powerful hand with a lot of effects that can already summon miror Jade in other ways after that the next most common card to summon is Ren brm some of your combo lines turn one one to summon a ren brm instead of an ALB on a lilion not a lot but some of them and usually when you do some of a RRM in your turn one combo you're going for a very strong combo and there's also situations where going second you might want to summon a ren into the opponent's field because it's more effective than a marade at breaking that field for example in the mirror match if your opponent has their own mirror Jade summoning a renb which can negate and bounce that mirror Jade of any time is really effective and it's also really good against promethian princess and IP mascarin as well by summoning RnB with branded Fusion you're also leaving albas in the graveyard which can make other cards Al as well so one of the rarest summons with branded Fusion is Titanic lead Titanic lead gains attack equal to the levels of the monsters used as material so it's normally 3,700 attack this is the highest attack monster that you can summon with just the Branded Fusion so if you're trying to get over a big monster that you can't remove any other way you might want to summon Titanic or if you're trying to otk your opponent without playing into neiru this could be an option for that too but other than those situations there's not much reason to be summoning Titanic lad with branded Fusion it's not likely that it's ever going to be the only option you have left during a Grind game since Titanic Cloud actually normally leaves the extra deck pretty quickly since the best Target descend with Grano is often Titanic lead it's also the best Target descend at High Spirits very often and it's one of the best targets to send with miror Jades effect if it's still available as well another rare summon is is spren the iron Dash Dragon this is even rarer than Titanic lead although it actually has a pretty interesting effect it's one of the only alas fusions that is capable of getting rid of spell and trap Cuts so if you're playing this card it could come up as a way of outing some annoying flip Gates or follow-up effects a really relevant example that comes to mind is Nightmare pain and then somewhat ironically summoning miror Jade directly with branded Fusion is one of the rare summons too the reason it's rare is because to summon marage Aid it requires you to use a Fusion Monster from your field as material this is usually just not a good use of resources so it would only ever make sense to do this if it was the only solution to a situation or maybe you're trying to outplay an opponent who is expecting you to do something different and something else I should mention about branded Fusion is that it has a restriction that locks you into Fusion lists the way this restriction is worded means that it locks you into Fusions for the whole time that you activate it not just after the activation but also before if you link summon a Verte you cannot then activate branded Fusion after and if you activate branded Fusion you cannot then link summon Verte later that turn the reason why Verte is effect to copy branded Fusion still works is because branded Fusion's restriction is not considered part of the card's effect but rather a condition that is applied to the card which is why you are able to link summon anything you like and then still go into Verte at the end to copy branded Fusion from your deck but aside from ver specifically this restriction is why branded cards only see play and branded and unsplashed into other decks theoretically a deck mode doesn't special summon from the extra deck at all like Labyrinth or voiceless voice could play cards like branded fusion aler and opening but since opening and branded Fusion are limited and semi-limited using an engine like this is not really that attractive another thing about this Fusion lock that I want to clarify is how it works when your branded Fusion gets negated like I said the Restriction is not part of the effect the condition of the Cod which means that if your brand INF fusions effect is negated but the activation of the Cod itself is not and the fusion lock will still apply the only way to have your Fusion lock condition not apply is if the activation of branded Fusion is negated Ash Blossom only negates effects not activations which is why you still can't link someone after branded Fusion gets ashed this is different from something like Baron def flow which negates activations if your branded Fusion is negated by Baron then you can still link summon afterwards say the condition on branded Fusion will not have applied if you're having trouble figuring out which cause negate effects and which cause negate activations all you have to do is read the code as it will always specify there's nothing you ever need to memorize any card that says negate that effect negates effects and any card that says negate the activation negates activations sometimes a card can be tricky and say something different like negate that activated effect this is still negating just an effect not an activation so a cut like this will not stop the fusion lock from applying this can be pretty difficult to get your head around when you're first starting out which is why I wanted to break it down simply just now I'd say that if you can correctly figure out how it works with these four examples that you have all the understanding you need for most interactions the H once SP to enclose on branded Fusion also works the exact same way if the card's effect was negated but the activation was not then you can't try to activate branded Fusion again but if the activation the Branded Fusion was negated then you can attempt to use it again even though the Cod is limited this is actually very relevant as there are options in branded to get your branded Fusion back from the graveyard other than that there's not much more to say about branded Fusion obviously you want to play the card in your deck and you're always going to play as many as you're allowed to so there's no real discussion about the ratios here you're obviously going to play the one branded Fusion the exact combos that you go for with branded Fusion are going to be saved for the combo section so for now let's just move on to the next card so ala the gesture of desia has the effect to such a branded spellow trap whenever it's normal ESP special summoned and that includes branded Fusion which makes ala one of your starter cards in some circumstances ala can actually be a stronger starter than branded Fusion itself as the Ala can also be used as fusion material from the field later on in the combo and in some other circumstances it can be a worse St as well since it uses of your normal either way though Alber is one of the strongest draws in of deck most of the time this will search for Branded fion if you already have branded Fusion in your hand you have a lot of good other options sometimes it gets branded lost or sometimes it can get branded in red or by ADV vanishment to help add power to your end board going first Alber is vulnerable to C like imp veila and gammer which is why it's pretty common to help insulate yourself against those cards by summoning a cesia to the field first cesia has a quick effect to Fusion summon so if your opponent decides to impo Ala you can chain cesia to remove the Ala from the field which will then Dodge the imper aler also has this other effect that can be used in the graveyard is not the most relevant effect in branded but it's also far from the least relevant effect for some reason even skilled opponents sometimes overlook this which means you can often catch people of God with this it's pretty good at denying an otk by summoning an extra body and then negating something can be useful too I think the reason it gets forgotten about is because aliber doesn't end up in the graveyard in every single branded combo sometimes he ends up being banished instead so when you're playing against branded you don't always get hit with alpos graveyard effect making it a surprise when you do a couple match ups where this effect can be really good are mathi and Snake Eyes against snake eye alabra can counter the zantis otk by triggering right after the Zanes uses its Spanish effect you target the zantis which negates its effect preventing it from being able to destroy anything in the battle phase and you now have an extra block her as well against mathi you can counter access code by triggering alra after it pots one of your Fusion moners by NE getting access code its attack drops back down to 2300 and it can't destroy anything else after that which is why it's especially effective when your opponent was going for an update Jamma plus access code otk another way you can use this effect is as a chain block for a more important trigger effect like mirade or caritis which can also be a huge swing in your favor if the opponent didn't see it coming now unfortunately you can't use both effectes of Alber on the same turn so when you special summon it back from the graveyard with the second effect you can't then use its first effect to immediately search for a card if you could use both on the sing turn this card would be a lot better and it's already one of the best rols in the deck this is why you play foolish burial and gicus unbranded as they are essentially just additional copies of ala thanks to tragedy so yeah aler is one of the best daughters so it makes sense to play as many copies as you can next is branded opening this is another start card and it's a one card combo just like aliba and branded Fusion so you don't need any other specific card for this card to play what it does is special amount of desb must from your deck or alternatively add it to your hand in some ways it's a better stter than alabra and in one big way it's a worse starter than alibra it can be a better stter with an El because it special summons from the deck which let you keep your normal summon for something else when you go second this can be extra helpful as you can now normal summon elas without having to give up your aliar effect however opening can be worse than aliar since it does require an extra discard as well opening can also summon quen not just Alber quen says that it's always treated as a desia monster even while it's in the deck so even though it doesn't have desia in its name it is still a valid Target for opening this is another reason why opening can be a better draw than alabra as it has multiple options for what to summon summoning quem with opening doesn't do much by itself but once you start adding other cards into the equation summoning quem can sometimes be a better play than summoning aliver the big downside of opening as a starter though and why alabra is in my opinion still the better drawer is that you have to discard an extra cut even though there are a bunch of cards in branded that want to be discarded having to go minus one like this is not a good thing there are other effects in branded that also discard cards so the chances of having enough beneficial discards in your hand is pretty low also you don't want to be getting so low on cards in hand that you aren't even able to use all of these effects that require discard unlike elas opening doesn't discard for cost instead it's part of the effect which means that if opening gets negated at least you don't have to disc cut however in my experience because opening disc cuts for effect most opponents are just going to let it resolve and then use that disruption afterwards the fact that it discounts for effect though does specifically allow tragedy to trigger when it's discarded for opening which makes sense as they are bu desps another part of open's effect that is important to remember is that it also has a fusion look similar to branded Fusion it's easy to forget about this cause lock since most of the time shortly after using opening you're going to be activating branded Fusion anyway but this card in fact also has its own Fusion although it works slightly differently to the one on branded Fusion firstly openings lock is part of the card's effect so the lock won't apply if the card's effect is negated it doesn't need to be an activation negation like with branded Fusion so if your opponent is negating this with Ash or inom the luck won't apply the other difference with opening is that it only locks you into Fusions for the rest of the tone after the card was holds so if you have already link summon previously that turn you can still activate opening this lock and the exact rulings around it can be relevant for the Times where you want to summon ver if you activate opening you can't then link summon ver afterwards but if you summon a ver first then you can still activate opening keep in mind that V also has its own lock so situations like this can get pretty intricate branded opening also has another effect while it's in the graveyard it can protect a Fusion Monster from being destroyed by a card Effect it's a onetime use it banishes itself when you use it and it's not an activated effect so it's not something that can be negated by your opponent it only protects your fusion monsters so it can't protect your main deck monsters like cesia or quen but it can be used to protect multiple fusion monsters at the same time this is a nice bonus effect that adds some free extra power to your board protecting even just once from ref effects like kierin skyone princess Byron or transcendent Dron can be a Difference Maker if your opponent uses a mass board white like RI or darkhole you can use opening to protect all of your fusion monsters even if you ought to control a bunch of non-fusion monsters as well the fusion monsters will all be protected and the non-fusion Monsters will be destroyed one card that works really well with this effect is barad furious Dragon branded opening doesn't care if it's an opponent's card Effect or your own it can be always used to protect so by using Furious dragon in combination with with opening in the graveyard you can destroy a card your opponent controls without having to actually destroy a monst that you control one other thing I should mention about opening is that it's a quick Place bill this means you can sometimes play better into Maxi by chaining it in response to Maxi which can also play around droll and vea by activating opening right away in the drw feas since quam can lead to disruption on the opponent's turnone it's also not impossible that you might want a set opening from the deck with albon in the end phase if you don't have access to your better Targets this can sometimes be the next best option it's a shame the Branded opening is semi limited since it limits its ability to be used as an engine in other decks something like voiceless voice for example could make use of a branded engine playing Just branded fusion aliba and three opening so moving on to cesia cesia is a really interesting card and branded itless you Fusion someon using monsters from your hand and field as material as a quick effect the fact that this is a quick effect effect lets it do a lot more than just extend your plays on turn one I mentioned before that cesia can be used to protect your Al from imper and Bor and that of course applies to your other important effects like albon and Rebellion say gesia can be summoned with Fusion deployment you will often summon it from the deck as your very first play sending up that protection right away usually you will end up using the cesia later on in the ter so you will be vulnerable to imper and ba after afterwards but once you've resolved albon and the Bellion the effectiveness of impal MOA for your opponent goes way down you resolve for into Fusion so your plays have split into multiple different paths but I find happens quite often when your opponent has inal and you have cesia is at the end of not using the Imp on your turn one at all and they instead use it on start of their own turn to negate your marriage a cesia or quen this is a lot better than having your Ali get negated at the start of your C as that would stop everything so cesia does a good job in this situation the other huge use for using cesia as a quick effect is to Fusion summon on the opponent's turn this is one way to back your marriage Aid with additional disruptions having albas in your field or in your hand would allow you to make an additional alas Fusion on the opponent's turn which can ultimately lead to things like Furious Dragon Draco stellia or a second marade even if you already have a marade from your turno combo it's possible to make use of another marade with cesia as Mar's effect is nauy hard once per 10 so as long as you can remove the first marade to get around it's only control one merate cloth summoning out a second one is going to be very strong as you can use the banish effect again and if this is not possible like I said you can still go for other options like Furious Dragon Dr stellia or even sanctifier sometimes as well cesia also doesn't have to summon a Master with its own dis ruption to be effective on the opponent's T sometimes it can be a very useful tool just trigging a cl cl can provide mirade back from the graveyard so using cesia to fuse away a spent marade just so the qu can revive it can be a pretty good play it's also branded lost which creates a window where the opponent can't respond after you Fusion summon so using cesia on their turn just to create this window could allow you to guarantee the resolution of another important effect VL also such as a card when you fusion sumon um and that could be triade mcua which is negate from the hand for an opponent's monster effect so using cesia just to get a search for this can also be a good play where it gets really strong though is when you combine all of these things together for example using cesia to fuse away a spent marage a into drilia which is its own disruption then while under the Branded loss window you search from Aura and revive back that same irade with quen now most of the time it cesia that you summon on turn one will end up fusing itself away for its own effect which means that to get it back onto the field on the opponent 10 you'll need to use an effect to bring it back this will usually be quum which can sometimes trigger on your own turn to bring CIA back right after you fuse with it sometimes this happens at the end phase after quum is brought out by tianic BL and then sometimes you can do it on the opponent's turn as well it's worth noting that if you do do do it on the opponent's turn then your qu effect will have been used which means it's not available to revive something else like your Merin you can also put a cesia from your graveyard onto the field with sanctify this might come up if you had to go sanctify a past because of an opponent's Max another method of getting cesia into the field for the opponent's turn is to never fuse it away on your turn one to begin with you don't normally want to give up upon access in grino which requires cesia as material so this is probably only going to come up if you have an additional copy of cesia in your hat cia's effect does not need to use itself as part of the fusion summon even though it usually does so you can technically fuse away a different copy in your hand for Gro and leave the one on the field where it is something I will say though is that it's not essential to have cesia plays on the opponent's turn as there's plenty of other ways to set up disruptions cesia might be flashy when used as a quick effect but actually most of the time when you use this card you'll just be using her effect to extend on your own turn one as part of your standard combo focusing on setting her up to be live on the opponent's Dent is good but not really a priority the way you normally extend with cesia in your standard combos is by waiting until you have branded lost on the field and then using her effect to fuse herself with another light or Dart monster to make granal granal specifically requires cesia as material so so you have to access cesia in order to make use of this card gr gral typically then send something like Titanic L to the gravad which gives you access to quem in the entries branded loss will be able to trigger and search for some kind of extender so that's what ceser is going to give you in most of your lines since aler is your main starter and it uses up your normal summon using cesia as an extender requires you to have a way of special summoning her to the field the best way to do this is with Fusion deployment which can just summon Gia from the deck but you can also summon her from the hand with her own effect in order to use this effect you do need to have fallen of elbows on your field or in your graveyard which makes it more situational than Fusion deployment however it's not actually that difficult to get ALB into your graveyard and you also don't always draw a fusion deployment anyway so summoning it from your hand is sometimes your own option cesia is searchable which means you can often set up a situation where you put elbows into the graveyard and then search for cesia to then special summon her from the hand one a really good way to do this is to use branded in High Spirits to discard an albas from the hand and then search for cesia albas is one of the best discards for heper anyway so you're not going out of your way for a play like this it's also worth noting that Albi on the sh Dragon becomes Fallen of albas while in the graveyard and this is also a really good discard for Brandon and High Spirits even without High Spirits Al on the sh dragon can still send albas from the deck to the graveyard and there's a whole bunch of other discard effects that you have in branded but can also put copies of albas from your hand into the grain son cesia with her own effect could be a great way to play around hand trips it naturally plays around impal and vea like I mentioned before but by summoning her specifically with her effect you'll have even more options like playing around Ash as you can go for ver lines that don't ever activate branded Fusion at all this is something you can't do with the M as deployment also has a fusion lock you'll see when we get to the playing around hand trap section that cesia albas High Spirits and ber tend to play a big role in dodging Ash Blossom one handra that cesia hand effect does play into though is Maxi the effect activates which means the opponent does have a chance to chain a maxi chances are if you're going to someone could tease you from your hand you're going to be trying to do it before normal summoning aliber so that you can protect it from imp and baa but the downside of doing this is that you play harder into max C your opponent will draw one for the summit of cesia and if you don't want to activate branded Fusion even to just summon sanctifier you'll be giving them a second draw normal summoning cesia also has some application to playing around hand traps but most of the time normal summoning cesia is just weaker than normal summoning ala cesia also has one more effect this effect to add itself back to the hand of the entes is pretty important for Branded the biggest use for this is giving you a free card in your hand that you can discard for your discard effects on the opponent's turn this is a pretty common theme in branded High Spirits also has the exact same effect and using them as discards that constantly recur themselves is the best way to make use of it if the game becomes a Grind game adding back resources like this especially cesia can be very helpful too although it isn't in my opinion the main strength of these effects branded when you go first is usually trying to get a lethal grip on the gain by turn three and so the small value you get by adding one cesia isn't that impactful however if adding back that cesia is the difference between having no cards in hand and one card in hand and the difference it makes is actually huge as you can now use a discard effect for example you could summon elbaz on the opponent's turn with Ren brm and then use its effect to fuse you can summon mellion with Fusion duplication which requires discard or you can flip over a set super poly also C's effect to add itself back to the hand is not limited to your own end phase so you can add back CIA in your own end phase then discard it for something like albas then in your opponent's end phase add the cardia back to your hand again it's really easy to meet the requirement of sending a Fusion Monster to the graveyard Mary de alone can do this on the opponent T and on your turn cos like grol heper and de servant and Rebellion can all easily put a Fusion Monster into the graveyard it's honestly easy to forget that this requirement even exists as it's so much more likely to be me than not even when you're not trying there are times where you would choose not to add back cesia to your hand for example if you plan on Reviving it with quen but these cases are honestly pretty rare like I said putting cesia onto the board for the ap's turn is not a priority having a discard via discard effects is usually way more important and is also the possibility of adding back cesia even if you plan on summoning it with quam anyway as you could just use your discard effect first to put it back into the graveyard the only time where you would consider leaving cesia in the graveyard is if you plan on immediately Reviving it that same time with quem doing something like a heist for its play in general I'd say that you should be very certain that you don't want to add back cesia before you choose not to and then the last thing about cesia that I should mention is that it's a tuna this doesn't matter for regular branded but there is a Synchro build of branded that makes use of Cut easier this way using K and cesia as Tunas outside of branded is also viable like in runic bestio for example and if branded Fusion ever gets banned the best way to play branded cards is likely to be with synchros so the amount of cesia that you play in the deck is something that a lot of branded players seem to be unsure about I get asked a lot of questions about branded and one of the things that I get asked the most is how many qu and C it should be played even amongst the competitive players there seems to be no real consensus about whether it's best to play one two or three fusion deployment is the best way to summon cartesia if you're playing mod Mon cesia and you draw cesia alongside deployment it does give you the option of using away the second cesia from the hand and leaving the first one on the field which can lead to a stalker end board and if you do only play one you can still summon alvas from the deck with deployment instead and then special summon the CIA from your hand using her own effect Fusion deployment can also summon from the hand as well as the deck so if you don't want to use an albas like this you can also just summon the cesia from your hand with the deployment if you're going second summoning albas with deployment is actually a real play so drawing cesia can be nice as it means you don't have to choose between going for the Alba's board breaker effect and having access to cesia like I also mentioned throwing cut easier can help play better into hand traps which would make it a good throw and with the amount of discard effects and branded drawing redundant copies of cesia is not the end of the world either another thing to consider is that if you don't draw a better starter cesia can be normal summoned at your first play it's not just an extended depending on what else you have in the hand to fuse with cesia can be a start like this cesia pinia for example can access branded Fusion without needing ala if you think your branded deck doesn't have enough stares adding extra copies of cesia would be a way to add more stares to it kzi isn't a one card combo like other starters but in combination with other cards it can sometimes make a decent play there are advantages to having cesia over some of the other starters in branded keeper of dragon magic for example is very one-dimensional and vulnerable to hand traps whereas cesia is very much the opposite it plays well into hand traps and has a lot lot of options for help play a DEA servant is another starter that branded can play this car can be strong going first but is much weaker going second something that isn't the case with cesia if playing through a lot of hand traps and going second are especially important in the format L three cesia over some of the other stats in branded could be the best option you could also not cut down on any of the other stat cards at all in order to make room for extra copies of cesia if non-engine cards are not that important important during a full mat then you could cut non-engine cards from the deck in order to play the extra cius having more than one copy of Cy in your deck it means that if your froze copy gets banished either by your own effect like albon or by an opponent's effect like AYSO or cold by the grave there's still a second copy you can access if you need to some downsides to playing multiple copies is the deck space takes up as well as the possibility of drawing too many in my opinion though the biggest downside of playing multiple cartesia is that the card while flexible is actually just not that strong of a draw deployment is a strong card to draw but Kia herself requires set up the special summon meaning you won't always be able to do it and as a normal summon it's a lot weaker than something like aler or keeper even if cesia does play around hand traps well it's not worth much if your endb is weak enough to be beaten by the opponent's engine anyway cesia is at our best when she's an extender to an already acceptable player and the best way to do that is with Fusion deployment I like playing two cesia in 50 or 60 card branded and in 40 card branded I think for sure I'd be playing just one overall though playing any amount of cesia is valid all options have their strengths and weaknesses so I think saying any number is correct would be misleading so next is Quan this card has a lot in common with cesia it's a light spellcaster with 1500 attack it's level four T tuna it's kind of a ster but doesn't work on its own and strangely enough it's also a card that branded Blaze con seem to agree on how many you should play in the deck qu has two effects both are pretty relevant but really it's the second effects to revive a monster that mentions alar that makes the card worth playing the first effect helps set up the second effect by immediately putting a target for it in the gray and it also serves to make quen not a terrible normal summon as it can pair with some other cards to create access to branded Fusion but it's this second effect but's really going to asly disrupt the opponent create a Grind game for you and generate Advantage this effect Trigg is whenever a card leaves the extra deck which includes either player summoning from it the basic idea is when your opponent summons an extra Deck monster a qu will trigger to revive something it doesn't have to be your opponent something from the extra deck it can also be you and Chum can Al triggered by some effects that remove cards from the extra deck without summoning some notable ones include your own marriage Aid theia servant and there also cat to a unicorn and pot of prosperity the standard way to use quen is to summon it during the end phase the effect of Titanic then use the first effect on summon to send alas from your deck to the Grave then on the opponent's turn you use the second effect to revive that Alas and fuse with your opponent's board can also frequently revives Miri to get the Banning effect again or cesia to perform a fusion song any master that mentions alas anywhere in it text is able to be summoned with quam Alon doesn't trigger a Fus and summon if you revive it like this but it does still come up a lot as albon is very often e Your Grave good and because of its end phas effect Reviving it to your field can be good just to generate resources its dark dragon stat line is also relevant for summoning Furious dragon with cesia branded in red or branded banish another common way to access quem is to the second effect of granel granel says that if your opponent specialism as a monster using a monster effect you can banish it from your field of graveyard and then special some npia monster from your extra deck or a dogmatica monster from your main deck quen says that it is always treated as a desp and a dogmatical monster which means it can be some from your deck with Grano again this line of text on quem applies even while it's in the deck it's not uneffective to cut it's just a condition applied to it at all times if Crum was on the field and its effects get negated by impo the Cod is still treated as a despa and a dogmatic this is why the card can be summoned by brand opening as well and it's also important for banishment which can revive a despa monster qu also gets used as material for citis which specifically requires is a despian GU is technically not a starter card but it often functions that way if you draw it by itself the best play that gu can make is to just send albas to your grabia and then pass Town hoping that the abono will play right into it by special summoning from the extra deck if they do play into this it's actually not that bad since if you're able to summon marage a it's solid disruption that is then capable of accessing your whole engine eventually the problem with this though is that it's really easy for your opponent to just not summon from the extra deck before they can deal with the quen quen only has 1500 attack so it's not unlikely that your opponent's main dick monsters can just attack over the Quin first fortunately though if you draw any other engine card alongside Quan you're most likely going to be able to make a better play and with the amount of engine cards that branded normally plays the chances of not seeing a c that combos of qum is pretty low qu can combo with a lot of the cards as its first effect to send a card that mentions of albas to the graveyard has a lot of possible targets it's not just monsters one can also send spells and traps so you will frequently send albas aesia also retan and branded Fusion itself sending retan can help access branded Fusion by then also sending branded Fusion to the greated with shred dragon or sne sending branded fusion with quam can also be a way of making Fusion duplication life most cards in the deck mention fall on of albez but there also some important cards that don't so you will want to make sure you know what is a quan Target and what is it aliber for example doesn't mention for of alz and so isn't a target for either of qu's effects the bals don't mention alz banishment tragedy and masquerade all don't mention El either weirdly enough quam is able to send another copy of itself with its first effect which not something you would expect it to be able to do this isn't super important but it does allow quam the fact to put a target for banishment in into the graveyard as none of the other desperia monsters mentioned Alves this is actually an interaction that sometimes matters for comos with m a servant the times where you get the most out of a normal summoned quen is when you already have the means to play anyway without gomason and your qu is able to provide free value and extension in these situations theam is pretty much a Wim card as you didn't need it in order to play quam is a star is capable of playing around hand WPS symol to cesio as it has more options for how it can be used when compared to aliber but most strong opponents will understand that normal summoning a quen is probably a sign of weakness as it's not the preferred way to stop playing in branded so they could easily just Handa the quen knowing that you probably don't have a better play another huge issue with styling your plays with quen is that a lot of youres are able to brn out quen for free with Titanic l in the end phase anyway so having the quem already means your resources are somewhat wasted there is also grino which can summon a quem from the deck using its second effect so something that is a good argument for playing multiple Quin is that you can summon one on your own term with Titanic glad and then summon another one on the opponent's tone with the second effect of gr this is important and I think that this is probably the best reason to want to play two quum in your deck it shouldn't be because you want more star it should be because you want a target for grang personally I think quim is just such a bad drawer that the card can be treated like a brick and play it one just like branded in red or banishment you want to search for this or special somebody from the deck but you don't want to draw it as it's just not powerful enough as a normal Z I think it's fine to play too especially in 60 card branded but I still personally be trying to play one if possible and if you're playing a smaller deck like 40 card branded or 50 card branded playing one qu is definitely optimal in my opinion A lot of people do still choose to play two which I think is fine again like I said the biggest thing is having that second target for grol anyway let's move on to the next card which is albon the shrouded Dragon so next is albon the shrouded Dragon this card reads a lot more complicated than it actually is the most important part of this card by far is that it can send a branded spell a trap or full one of from the deck to the great if the Tred is in the hand when you do this it will draw a card and if it's in the graveyard you won't draw a cut either way though you get to send s the Comm to the gravan the card is deceptively important from branded it plays an Irreplaceable role in accessing brand of fusion when you don't draw away to search it directly between Al opening foolish burial galopus keeper of dragon magic and the one branded Fusion itself there is a decent amount amount of cars that can get the Branded Fusion directly but it's not so many that you can expect to see one in every hand especially considering how big some branded decks can be so having a way to access branded Fusion when you don't draw these directly increases the consistency of the deck and these cards are also magnets for hand traps like impo and Bor so having a backup way to access branded Fusion that doesn't involve needing another normal summon is going to come up a lot even in the games where you do draw direct access to it shot Dragon helps get to branded Fusion by using retribution retribution can banish itself from the grave to add back a branded spell of trap from your graveyard to your hand So the plan is to send retribution and branded Fusion to the graveyard so that you can then add back the Branded Fusion to your hand sh dragon can only send one branded spell of trap to the graveyard and the cops effect is a hard once per 10 so it does need to be paired with another effect to get to branded Fusion most of the time this other effect that you pair with is s which when sent to the graveyard can send any branded spell of trap from your deck to the graveyard these two cards form a pair that let you access branded Fusion by sending one half of the combo each one of these carts sends retribution and the other one sends branded Fusion since s is a target for gruol which could be summoned using cesia any way you have to access cesia is also a way to get to sarin it's also not just s and that could be ped with shat Dragon to do with this combo quam can also send either retribution or branded Fusion to the grad shed dragon is super searchable so it's really easy to get to this card ice spirits mcua magnut and branded last will all frequently search this and it could even be sent from the deck to the graveyard with grol and Quin also a lot of lists buy three copies of shreded dragon now so hard drawing this card is also pretty likely the reason why a lot of branded decks play three is because the card is actually pretty good to draw the most important part of the card is its cost but the effect to draw one is of course not bad either and if you don't need to use retribution to access branded Fusion using it to add back a different card or just for follow up on a future turn is also pretty good the card rep places itself when you draw it like upstart Goblin so the bonus of sending a retribution or ALB to a graveyard is almost completely free sh dragon is also one of the best cause to discard with High Spirits as it is a dark dragon now the the reason why I say almost completely free is because there is actually one downside of using shrouded Dragon like this the fact that the card is a hard once per time is that if you use it at the start of your turn just to draw another card you no longer have the option of searching for it later that time and then sending something specific to the gravan this can actually matter a lot as you have to basically guess which card is going to be the most useful to send from the deck to the graveyard at thetic good time retribution is usually the best one but sometimes sending albas or branded Fusion can be better you aren't sure yet what hand trap your PL is going to use if any and you also don't know what card you're going to draw until after you choose what to send this can create some feel bad situations where you choose to send retribution at the start of your turn and then draw into a carard that would have preferred you to send Albert like cartesia or branded in white or alternatively it used to send alar and then you draw to Quin this isn't a huge issue if your hand is playable any way but it does make for a meaningful downside to playing multiple copies another downside of playing multiple copies is drawing too many of them it never feels good to draw shrouded with shrouded as the effect is a hard of as Pop That being said this is a Min a issue as branded can easily make use of a dead card by discarding it a second shed dragon is also actually kind of a good discard as it represents followup on your next to so overall I'm not really convinced At All by the arguments against playing multiple copies the only reason I might consider cutting down on them is if the deck space is desperately needed for more non-engine cods the main cut descend with shrouded is ret but other than that another good cut descend is branded sword not every list plays this card but the ones that do do have a slightly stronger shrouded dragon as there's another good option to send with it branded opening can sometimes be good to send to set up destruction protection via fusions and sending High Spirit can be a better way of setting up discard F in the end phase I mentioned that setting up albas in the graveyard for the opponent's turn is something you will always try to do and shouted dragon can help with that another part of shout Dragon the Kim El is that it name becomes Fallen of alz while it's on the field or in the graveyard this means that having shrouded dragon in your graveyard makes cause like cesia and branded in white life and it could also be a target for Brandon and red and even renr there are a lot of combos that rely on this by discarding the card for High Spirits session cesia and then special summoning the cesia from your hand making use of the fact that the shrouded dragon is treated as albas while in the grve yet one last thing to mention about this guard is the rare cases where you actually want to summon this card to the field instead of sending a card from your deck to the graveyard for the cost of shrouded you can send one from your hand instead which will allow you to special summon the shed to the field this is pretty much just to use es the first one is to allow you to go for a birthday in some bad hands like for example if you open trout Dragon plus a hand TR as well as a brick branded spell trap like banishment you can send the banishment with the shroud of dragon and the normal summon the hand trap to make a ver and then the second use is to use it as material for an alas fion when you don't have access to an actual alas something to make sure you keep in mind about this card is that it sends from the grave cost not effect this means that your opponent can't really negate this in any way overall this card is a staple in branded you should probably play all free and even if you don't this card is going to be absolutely vital to your combos next is springen kit this is a fairly simple card you will often search for this with branded l or mcua as a way of extending a place at this point you've normally resolve branded Fusion that ter and you can use kits effect to search for Branded in white or branded in red to keep extending if you're going first specifically you can also search for an endboard piece like banishment branded in red or even retribution as an additional disruption for your opponent's 10 if you've not resolved branded Fusion yet kit can also search for Branded Fusion which is how you can sometimes use kit to play through hand traps kit is searchable with branded in High Spirits and is often really good to do as High Spirits will usually put an albas fusion into the graveyard which allows you to special summon the kit from your hand this means that if your normal summon gets hand trapped you can use High Spirits to search for kit and then use kit to still search for Branded Fusion kit being a target for High Spirits is also what makes these High Spirits combos playable a lot of the time as it means that resolving High Spirits can always get to brand of fusion if kit wasn't in your deck you wouldn't be able to guarantee brand Ed Fusion just from resolving pbgs another way of using kit to beat hand traps is by taking advantage of the special summon effect to help make Verte as a way of playing around Ash Blossom this will usually only come up when you use High Spirits but there are other times this might occasionally come up like after resolving grass for example or when you go second and resolve a normal summon albas kit is also a stter cut it can be normal summoned and then used to search directly for branded part that makes it worse than most of your other normal summons is the fact that you have to put a caring your hand on the bottom of your deck this effect of losing a card for nothing feels really bad especially in a deck that wants to discard a lot of cards most brand diffusion lines involve discarding a gar with lellan which means if you go first and start your combo with a normal summoned Kit only two cards out of your five card starting hand get to survive until the end of turn one one of them is the kit a second one needs to go back onto the bottom of the deck and then a third one needs to be discarded for the Bellion this is why kit works better as an optional extender rather than a starter and you can choose to just not use kit if you'd rather keep all the other cards in your hand keeper of dragon magic is another card that also has this problem keeper requires a discard in order to search for Brer Fusion when is normal the reason why keepit is a slightly better starter than kit is that certain cards provide value and discarded like albas and retb whereas putting a cut to the bottom of the deck is always going to be useless there's other events just to keeper too like the fact that it's a dark dragon for High Spirits and it also can sear for Fusion deployment not to mention the fact that it actually has a second effect to revive alz from the graveyard there's also the fact that using kit as a starter removes the possibility of searching it and using it again as an extender the effect is a hard ones per turn and most lists don't want to play more than one anyway in my opinion the best way to actually use kit is for followup on future turns kits effector can add any branded spell or trap from the deck to the hand but it can also grab them back from the graveyard or from banished it's the only way to recur banished spells and traps and having another way to add back from the graveyard Alarma retribution only increases the power of your grind game if you use Fusion duplication to copy branded Fusion the Branded Fusion ends up banished which leaves kit as your only option for getting it back similarly if your opponent activates Dimension shifter and you go for Branded Fusion the Branded Fusion will be banished and kit will again be the only way to get it back keeping your kit for followup and not committing to it on your first turn will not only allow you to save a card in hand but it also allows you to save your Kit's effect for the grand game where you might need it to reuse something since kit is highly searchable especially over the course of multiple turns you can usually reliably get to your kit during the grand game which combined with the fact that it's not a great starter card makes me really want to just play one most bred players agree that kit should be a one of but I do sometimes want more than one kit and I do sometimes see it in some people's deck lists also kit can be used going second just to put damage on the board it's attack is 1700 which isn't that much could I often find myself going for an otk line which includes searching and summoning kit just so that I can attack with it there's a few cute little tricks you can do with kit for example using the effect when you have no cards in the hand if you use the effect with no cards in your hand then the card that you add to your hand will just have to go right onto the bottom of the deck this is pointless if you're adding from the deck but if you're adding from the graveyard or from managed it can be a way of putting a cut back into rotation another trick is using kit to put back your one single copy of quen so that you can summon it in the de with Titanic clad or maybe putting back your third copy of alaz so that you can send it from the deck to the graveyard again with branded fusion and then the last trick I want to mention is to actimate Kit while you have no Cuts in the hand then chain marij Jade's effects to Bish and then chain Ren BMS effect to that to negate the miror jeed at resolution the ren BM can choose to bounce the kit back to your own hand which you can then put onto the bottom of the deck with its own effect this allows you to search with kit without losing a Cod add it recycles the kit to be used later on for a Grind game sadly though this play is pretty rare next is desp and tragedy this is the first real brick that we're talking about although it is far from the worst brick in the deck it's not a starter it's not an extender and it's not contributing to an additional disruption when you go first which is why the card is a brick I know I said that quen can be treated as a brick sometimes but at least she does something on her own and combos with a lot of other cards tragedy does absolutely nothing on its own besides being a set monster and it only really combos positively with a few specific cards like Fusion deployment cesia branded opening or a lure of Darkness it's those few combos which is why I say the card isn't the worst prick in the deck as it does work with those cards but it's still not that many hands that make good use of try with Fusion deployment you can special summon cesia from your deck and then use cesia to fuse with the tragedy in your hand to make Grano this will trigger the tragedy allowing you to search for Alaba which you can then use to normal summon and search for your branded fusion with a lure of Darkness you simply banish the tragedy for the aloa as it is a dark monster and then it will trigger and search for ala this is a really efficient use of resources and it is the strongest way to use a lric Darkness alongside banishing mcua which is why it can be tempting to play multiple tragedy in list that plays a and then we branded opening you can discard the tragedy and since openings discard is for effect and not for cost it will trigger the tragedy to search the main target to search with tragedy is alibo but it can also search for quen in a case of using opening to discard tragedy you will be able to special summon one of the targets from the deck with opening and then search for the other one with tragedy which you can then normal summon for the most part though tragedy is a draw especially at the competitive level where you really could afford to be breaking with branded and especially especially when you go second most hands that draw tragedy will make use of it by just discarding it for Bellion or some other discard effect and this is where we see another reason why tragedy isn't actually the worst draw in the deck its graveyard effect can reset any branded spell trap to your field which means it has some value when discarded just like retribution or albas you can't use both effects of tragedy in the same ton but if you discard it for the cost of a card like me Bellion you don't get the search effect anyway as it wasn't sent to the graveyard by a card Effect so you can just use the reset effect instead bat tone if you want to this reset effect is usually just for followup which means that you can often get the S effect on turn one and then still benefit from the tragedy's graveyard effect next turn probably to reset your branded Fusion another car that can often make good use of tragedy is grass even though tragedy is just a one of Milling it with grass is not unrealistic and when you do you will often have the choice of using the search effect to search for a normal sumon or declining to search and then using the second effect to reset one of The Spill and SH cards that you also M with grass sometimes tragedy can be set from the deck to the graveyard with the Branded Fusion which is a play that comes up a lot when you hard draw the Branded Fusion as you will still have your normal summon available it's also common and tragedy with Fusion duplication copying branded Fusion as you can search for a normal someone followup on the next turn all of this might make tragedy sound like it's actually a strong card that is worth drawing on its own merits but in reality that's not true the one tragedy is only in the deck to be a target for foolish burial gold sarcophagus and sometimes branded Fusion you still don't want to draw this card tragedy triggers when banished all one to the graveyard so foolish burial and gold sarcophagus have the same purpose of just triggering the tragedy from your deck to then search for Ali the point being that they're just additional copies of Alba and in order to do that a copy of tragedy needs to be included in the deck if you draw the one tragedy then foolish and goldar can no longer do their job of banishing alabra which is another reason why tragedy is a bad draw this is the main use for tragedy and I'm not convinced that the card is worth playing in the deck at all if it wasn't for fullish burial and G of confidence I think it goes without saying that most builds want to just play one however certain kinds of branded decks can actually make better use of tragedy when you draw it deck to play all three copies of Aur the patchwork engine masc rades in the extra deck Chimera and AD lium are in a much better position to use tragedy in your hand you can fuse it away for Branded in red and benefit when it becomes banished you can use polymerization to make multiple masquerades and having extra access to search for ad liit would be good too in this kind of build I actually kind of like playing all three copies of tragedy as the game plann is more about hard drawing fusion material than the standard branded deck is but when it comes to standard branded you're definitely wanting to play just one tragedy so overall I would recommend playing just one tragedy and I'd say that applies even if you are playing a lar of Darkness one interesting idea you can do to make tragedy a little bit less pricky is to play shidel con conu in the extra deck so that branded in High Spirits can disc up Trent this is hardly worth it considering how tight the extra deck is but if you are playing one of those more desp a heavy builds then this might actually be something that you do one thing to watch Alpha where tragedy is that you can't use both effects in the same turn so if you are planning on using the second effect make sure you don't trigger the first effect as well this is something that comes up a lot when you Mill it with grass there are times where you want to use the search and then the row also times where you want to use the reset effect instead so it's a good idea to think twice before using the tragedy after grats so next is tribade mcua if you're playing just one copy of tribade mcua and you're not playing branded sword then this is probably the worst draw in the deck you have to play it as an its important search Target for Branded lust but it really sucks to draw it does nothing on its own and it doesn't really provide value in the graveyard unless you can banish it there's only really branded in High Spirits that combos with it in the hand and even though this is possible to do it's not an ideal play as you prefer to send the dragon monsters for High Spirits like Titanic lead and albon not Ren also if you draw mcua and choose to discard it you no longer have it available to search later with branded lost this is why I say that mcua might just be the worst draw in the deck if you're only playing one and you're not playing branded sword that being said if you are playing the second copy or you are playing branded sword then the card becomes much more acceptable to draw it's not the end of the world to discard it and you can actually combo with it quite effectively this card is good to play because it's the only card that you can search for with branded lost that translates to immediate disruption on the opponent's turn you can search MK with lost on your own turn but you could also search for kit or shrouded Dragon instead both both of which can be used to set up extra disruption for the opponent's turnone as well when you search on the opponent's turnone with loss though mcua is really the only Target that then adds another disruption to your field it is possible that searching alas can translate to A disruption as well but that requires you to have CIA on the board which isn't something you always have whereas makua is a lot more reliable as it only needs an Al Fusion on the field to work I think a lot of players seem to think that mcua is in the deck to allow you to play around Nibiru this is not true unless you hard draw the Branded laws most combos don't search from a Coura before your fit summon and it's not like nibiro is a big threat for Branded anyway most of the time y comoo has a pretty nice s of Fu which is something I'll talk more about in the playing around hand chap section but basically mcc's job is not to beat neiru its job is to be an additional disruption for your end board since you already have plenty of other ways to disrupt the opponent mcua is not so important that it's ever worth playing twoo in my opinion especially not considering how bad of a drw the card can be there are some combo lines that use mcua in a different way like sending it to the graveyard to summon renr with branded fusion and then baging it from the graveyard with a pisal or alil these combos are kind of rare but when they do come up it usually means your end board is going to be really strong if you go for a combo like this it's not the biggest deal if you end up giving up on the search from aara with branded lost as your board is going to be really strong anyway also you can use branded sword sometimes to add it back from banish to your hand which is why I wouldn't consider playing two over a branded sword something else you can do is Shuffle back a Banished mcua with lellan to summon something like Joker stellia or mo dragon or maybe Ren Brom so it's not like banishing your one copy loses it forever and again like I said if you're playing branded sword it is super easy to get back a branish mcua and this is something that you're going to do a lot if you're playing that card in your deck branded regained is also a card that can technically put back advantage in the Korea so if you're playing that then you have another way of recycling mcua mcua is a target for gold sarcophagus if you're not interested in banishing tragedy to search for Aliva you can also banish mcua and then search for shrouded or cesia or alas depending on what else you have in hand AER searches for any monster that mentions Fallen ofas the list of monsters that this applies to is something that experienced branded players never think about but if you want need to branded it is something that you might take a bit of time to get used to a lot of the mosters in the deck mentioned albz but not all of them notable cards that don't mention albas are alra Saria lellan and tragedy in the cases where you start with gold sarcophagus to banish mcua you can easily add it back to your hand with banded sword if you're playing it and if you're not playing branded sword then you can also give upon them m carea Al together and it's not the end of the world all of this is to say that I don't think you're out of playing two or three I think the correct decision is always to play just one I think some of the tendency to play two comes from an outdated combo using brand diffusion plus abysal this combo uses two mcua and it plays nicely around the biru but it's updated because hard drawing Grand diffusion is not that likely anymore so most of the time you're going to be playing it in a buau anyway since you're going to be summoning five times before searching for mcua that combo existed before quen as well so there's actually a more Modern Way of playing the combo which involves using branded sword to add back the same vanished mcua instead of needing the second one so then for Branded and red this is one of your main sets with albon alongside branded banishment and just like banishment it serves as one of the main pieces of disruption on your endboard this card is a quick P spell which means when you go first it's basically a trap card you're going to set it and inflict it on the opponent's T and it's going to translate into a destruction and when you go second this card can be used as a board breaker since it doesn't need to be set you can just use it right away from your hand the way this card works is that it adds Mai despar or Fallen of alas from your graveyard to your hand and then Fusion summons a monster by banishing materials from your hand at field there's no restriction on which monsters you can summon and there's no restriction on which monsters you can use as material you can just use your hand or just use your field and you don't even have to use the master that you added back in fact you don't have to Fusion summon at all you can just choose to add back the card if you want to brand and red is a really flashy card and it can be pretty intricate at times so you can really show your skill with a card like this Bren and red is really good at creating disruptions as a fusion summon can get to something like Furious dragon orti tyera or even a mired and by performing a fusion summon on the opponent's turn you get to do things like trigger branded lost to search for mcua trigger quen to revive something or even just create a branded lost window for you to use something else like mirade or Maxi Fusion summoning on the opponent stand is a really big part of playing branded optimally and branded in word is one of the main ways to do that the way the card normally gets used is to flip the card during the opponent's turn and then Fusion summon either a guardian Chimera or an ellion which then triggers to summon mirade summoning guarding Chimera would allow you to pop two of your opponent's cards and then draw one or alternatively you could pop one of your opponent's cards and then draw two in general destroying two cards is preferable to destroying just one even though it feels good to dra a lot of cards at the point in the game where you normally activate branded Fusion you are more so trying to disrupt your opponent as much as you can rather than generate Advantage for yourself if you're only going to pop one card then summoning something else like miror Jade or a furious Dragon might have been the better option gutting crer is unique as it is the only way you have to clear a bunch of back row and branded if your opponent is playing a stun deck or Labyrinth Cima can be pretty good to summon during the end phase as you can just clean up two of their backer right away before they can chain them and branded and red is how you're going to do this it is also good at removing bodies from the board for combo decks as it can pop to at the same time and the effect doesn't Target with makes it harder for the opponent to avoid a lot of the time your opponent won't even be able to respond to your Chimera because of branded loss Camerra isn't in every deck as it can be situational and even if you are playing it summoning mirate can often be the better play too Mir can banish monsters instead of destroying them so it could be better for claring monsters that would float if you destroyed them like tement Monsters or SP of ubel when you summon mirade using branded in red you will often do it through lelly and first as you will more than likely have a miror jade on the field already which means you can't summon another one as miror Jade says you can only control one so in practice what happens is that you use the first Mar Jade to banish something then use the Branded new red after to fuse away the marade on your field fellow Bellion which then triggers to summon back another marade remember that Mar's effect is not a hard once per turn as long as you can put a new copy on the board you can banish as many times as you want you can also sometimes summon sanctifier with Brenton way as a way of playing around with opponents evenly matched if you're playing a lock like r or Christia satif fire is going to be your most common summon would branded in bread as it's how you're going to get these Floodgate monsters onto the field the card really has a lot of different ways to be used and like I said it's really skillful the key to using this card optimally is going to be managing your chain links for creating branded L Windows figuring out which triggers you want to activate on the resolution of your chains making sure you don't run out of monster zones and making sure you don't unnecessarily waste resources for your grind game another nice thing about branded and bread when you go first is that hard drawing it can sometimes allow you to play around in peral vea if a target for the Branded and bread gets into the graveyard before you go for your important effects like Al ver or keeper then you can really punish your opponent when they try to use a hand Trap by chaining the Branded in red and then banishing the aliar keeper from the field this will stop the imper Moa just like how chaining C easy it is the mon you can summon will often be caritis maybe even masquerade if you're playing it but if you're lucky it can even be a lellan which can then get you to merited which is really good considering you haven't even activated branded Fusion yet my favorite example of this is with Verte if your opponent imperm your Verte you can then chain branded in red Target alz or tragedy or Al add it back to your hand banish the ver from the field to summon either miror Jade kitis or masquerade and then resolve the verti anyway summoning something like miror Jade or if you already have it it can be sanctifier using branded and rit's Dodge targeting effects like this is something you could do on the opponent's turn as well if your opponent tries to Target your mirror Jade with something like a change of heart or a steak eyes flamb birge Dragon you will often chain branded in red to fuse it away you could also make good use of this play going second sometimes you might even s for Branded and bread so that you can then protect your alra from things like contain or chesa or even skill drink so Brandon and BR is usually just a one of every deck list and I think this is the correct decision even though there is a lot of reasons why hard drawing it can be good I think these are actually quite situational and not as common as you would think so overall I think the card is best to play at one one thing to watch out forward bend in red is that the most use Sone can't attack directly that turn this means nothing when you summon it on the opponent's turn but if you're going to be using it on your own turn it's important to remember this so that you don't mistakenly think you can attack for game when you actually can't the way you're supposed to get around this when trying to otk is to use branded in red to summon lellan and then move Bellion to summon something else that other monster will be able to attack directly so You' kind of dodged the Restriction here another thing you can do is just make sure that the monster that was summoned with branded and red attacks over a monster as it's only prevented from attacking directly and now for Branded banishment this is another key piece of a lot of you end bools unbranded this one card is capable of leading to so much disruption by itself and you will have games that are won by banishment alone the way the card works is that it revives a desia or a level eight oh Fusion Monster and infusion summons using either side of the field as material either side of the field here means that you can use your opponent's monsters which is a big part of what makes banishment so strong although it is also not essential for making good use of the cut either the cut is essentially monster reborn plus super poly in one card the typical Target management is albon as you're mostly getting to banishment through albon's and phase effect anyway when you revive the albon with banishment you can pretty often make drer dep pelia using it and an opponent's dark monster as material and like branded and red performing Fusion summon of any kind is going to let you trigger quam and branded lost as well banishment can really win games on its own sometimes as it's not just one disruption when you get to remove an opponent's monster it's also a second disruption with Drell that you summon and a third dis option with the mcua that you search with branded lost something else that's really good about banishment is that it banishes the monsters from Material instead of sending them to the graveyard this is very good for cleric monsters that would otherwise have been good in the graveyard like tier or your bell cuts and another thing is that would branded lost on the field you can even deny your opponent the chance to trigger anything that would normally trigger even when banished so an opponent's miror Jade for example can't trigger if you banish it with your banishments Jos stellia is the most likely monster you're going to be able to summon with banishment although once light and darkness dragon is released then you're definitely going to be wanting to summon this most of the time if possible in fact when we get to the combo section you'll see that most of the combos are future proof with this card in mind to summon dellia all your opponent needs is a dark monster as the ALB on you revive with the banishment is the Fusion Monster what's important to remember about banishment is that it can only Fusion some level eight or higher Fusion Masters which means you can't make mud dragon or Carrera with it this leaves draus telia and the future light and darkness dragon as the most generic options available management is usually pretty strong no matter how it's used but there all matchups for banishment can be really crazy like a mirror match tement or a beastial centurion in these matchups banishment is often able to Fusion sumone using only the opponent's monsters as material which is really good value when it happens against tier they will often summon kit colos or R colus and then any of the dark monster which means you can make jellia by banishing only their monsters and none of your own you even get to keep whatever you revive from the graveyard as a bonus against Bisal Centurion you can fuse away any two Bal or AAL plus oilla into Furious dragon and against the mirror match well there's a lot of monster you can make with banishment in the mirror match there's almost no combination of monsters that they can even put onto the field which is invulnerable to management somehow you fuse away their cesia for your own granal you can fuse away the alabas for your own marriage Aid and fusing away two of their fusion monsters for drink pelia is still a great play in the mirror match as well generally when you play a mirror match vanishment is the cut that the game often revolves around if the players are playing it I said that albon is the typical t for banishment this is true in theory for a lot of the combos but in practice it doesn't always go like that if your opponent puts you mirade or quam from the field into the graveyard and you still haven't used your banishment yet both of these are much better targets to revive than the Alia Reviving The mirade will allow it to use its banish effect again and Reviving quem will allow it to use its on summon effect again if you haven't used the revive effect of quam Reviving quum with banishment and then Fusion summoning will allow you to trigger the revive effect of quam right away it's worth pointing out by the way that the fusion summon with banishment just like branded in red is optional so you can choose to revive something if you want and then not Fusion summon you may consider doing this if you're Reviving a miror Jade and the only legal Fusion summon would require you to use that mirade also if you're under maxi banishment does give two draws as the two special summons are separate so if your opponent wants to chain Maxi to your management you might consider not Fusion summoning just to give your opponent only one draw another important use of management that I have to point out is when you use it to fuse with your own monsters this is still pretty good A lot of the time like I said you don't always have to fuse with your opponent's monsters to make good use of management sometimes it's important to use your own monsters to make Draco stellia just so that you can put another disruption on the board to stop your opponent you can also use management with your own Monsters Just to trigger a branded L window so that you can resolve something like sanctifier to summon a Floodgate to your opponent's field so sometimes I see branded lists that don't play banishment and while I understand why this decision is made I think it's a mistake especially if you're playing more than 40 cards a lot of the justification I've heard for management isn't worth playing is that branded and R is already the better set and there's no point to play both also management is pretty bricky when you draw it especially going second but in my opinion you do just have to play both vanishment is the alternative to Brandon and Brad in a lot of situations both cards are primarily there to be set with albon in the end phase but which one you choose to go for is going to depend on what the rtic go end board looks like generally if you have no target for Branded and bread then you're going to want to set banishments and if you do have a target for Branded and red then you can set the Branded and red instead once light and darkness striking is released as long as you have the Bisal lilion on your end board then you're probably going to want to set banishment as it will allow you to easily make the light and darkness dragon on your opponent's turn so next is branded retribution this card is mainly in the deck for its graveyard effect you can banish it to add back any branded spell of trap for from your graveyard to your hand this is good for followup and for Grind game as you could use it to recur your branded fusion and use it again on follow-up turns but the card is also really good for starting your play sometimes too you will often have to access branded Fusion for the first time through retribution it's very easy to send this C from your deck to the graveyard with cos shrouded Dragon Saria and quum and then by using another one of those effects to send the Branded Fusion to your gra you can add the Branded Fusion to your hand by using the retribution this is super important as it adds a lot of extra consistency to branded you don't just need to draw one of your one card starters to search for Branded Fusion you can instead combine multiple pieces together to get to branded Fusion through the effect of Retribution sh dragon and sity are the main ways to send retribution from the deck to the graveyard and both of those cards can be accessed with granon which means that any way you have to get to cesia can also be a way of sending retribution to the graveyard you can think of Retribution in the graveyard as being half of a branded spellow trap and to get the full branded spell shap you will need another effect to send another half to the gray GE like I said before the card can be used for followup and for a Grind game if you don't need retribution to access branded Fusion but you can still put it into the gradea anyway it's still pretty good to do that because it will let you add back branded Fusion on your next turn and then use it again if you have nulle retribution in your deck you can even add back branded Fusion a second time on a later turn the card is of course not just limited to adding branded Fusion you can use it to help access any other branded Spiller trap that will help you extend or establish a stronger inboard so if you already have branded fusion and you want your t one play to be stronger you can use retribution as half of a different spill of trap like branded in white or branded in red and then if you can exess another effect to make up that second half you can add that extender to your hand rishan is the strongest card you can Mill with grass without rishan I'm pretty sure grass is too weak to play in branded at all grass is kind of like both Hobs of the retribution combo in one as you will likely Mill retribution as well as the target to add back with it nice part about shrouded Dragon when you buil it with grass is that it can be either the retribution or the spellow Trap that you want to add back retribution is needed when you get ashed on branded Fusion as you can add cut it back next turn and try again it's to me Unthinkable to not play this card but the question is always how many you should play some lists play two and some lists play one generally you will see 40 card branded fitting just one copy into the deck while 60 card decks tend to play frequently more than one the reason you might prefer playing one is that the cut is a pretty bad draw as it's not a starter or an extender which pretty much qualifies it as a brick this is all the justification you need to play just one as it's always good to cut bricks from a deck and it also takes up a de SL but at the same time having two retribution automatically increases your grind game as you have an additional copy to use on later turns and it also decreases the awkwardness of drawing retribution as you still have the option of sending the second copy from your deck to the Greer it also gives you the option of using retribution to access branded Fusion on turn one while still having the second one available to use as followup and it also increases the chance to Mill the card with grass it also gives you better discard fotter as hard drawing the card while still having another copy in the deck is actually really strong since you can discard the one from your hand and then whatever you send from the deck to the graveyard can be the Target that you can add back with it I personally think that the upsides are playing two massively outweigh Downs another positive of drawing which distribution is that the card actually has a pretty acceptable effect on the field as well if you're going first this card is also just a really powerful trap that you can set to make your end board stronger it's kind of like hard drawing management except it's less of a brick and you can also have an additional option of using it as a disc card retribution on the field can negate a spell trap P monster effect that includes an effect the specials a monster some good Cuts in the gate with this are original simple spoils emergency some SAR Lotus as well as an opponent's branded fusion and branded banishment it's also a pretty reliable description as it can't be changed to and doesn't lose to the usual cause that brand disruptions usually do like cold by the grave and Maxine also the father retribution recycles your monsters when it does this is a really nice bonus whenever it comes up there are actually some interesting lines with Nadia servant that involves setting retribution with albon and then shuffling back two fusions from the graveyard when you activate it one thing to be careful of with using retribution on the field is that you can't use both of its effects in the same turn so if you do want to use retribution's summon negation effect you have to be sure that you don't also need to use its graveyard effect that turn interestingly enough retribution can be used in response to your own cards and effects not just your opponents and branded loss actually protect your cards from being negated by all cards not just your opponents so what this means is that in some very rare circumstances you can technically use retribution on your own Fusion cmon effects just to recycle monsters from your grave yet and then you still can a resol the fusion summon as Brandon lost is protecting it from being negated this isn't something you should try to do but it's pretty funny so I thought I'd point it out okay so now for the bestial L Bellion this is the main light Target you're going to want to send to the graveyard with branded Fusion so whenever you want to summon albon and you need to send a light monster this is probably going to be the car that you send the reason why it's by far the best option is because it gives you so much stuff for free the Alon you summon is a level eight dark dragon so you can tripet it right away to summon the Rebellion from your graveyard this puts the albon into the graveyard which means you can now use its end phase effect to set from the deck and if you set banishment then you don't even need to worry about getting a Target into the grard as the albon itself will be the valid Target for the banishment Rebellion on the field then also has its effect to place a continuous branded spellow trap from your deck onto the field so you will also get that for free as well the lellan on the field is also a 3,000 Defender and can be used as material for C's effect or as one of the materials for Guardian cimer so you really do get a huge amount of value from this card before the Bellion existed the best light targets of Brandon Fusion were fairy tale snow and Outlet the garden LW mod compared to those cards Rebellion is light years ahead in terms of value and Synergy with the rest of the deck the bellion's onfield effect usually brings out branded L which helps you extend your ter on combo and it also makes your end board more threatening but you can also get branded Beast or branded regained as well both of these are good options and the only reason why beast and regained are so rarely used in branded is because branded lost is just even better than both of them the Bellion also has this other effect that can be used in the hand you can discard it to search for a Bisal monster this effect makes it so you're not disrupted from using lilion in the normal way if you draw it as you can just immediately discard it to put it back into the graveyard in branded this effect is going to search for sarinia most of the time as s is actually part of your braded engine unlike the other B it's graveyard effect can send retribution from the deck to the graveyard which as I said before is kind of like half of a branded SP so Sania is the best Target for this but you can also be Magnum if you don't need the Sania or already have the Sania it's also Tru worm and ball Drake as well these two are less common in branded decks especially Bal Drake but they do have specific uses and depending on how good bis deals are in the format it could be good to play these technically the more bis deals you have in the deck the better lellan hand effect becomes as you have more options to search which is why you often see the lists that are playing aot a lot of B deals also tend to play a lot of copies of lellan as well the question of how many lellan you should play is something that branded plays seem to struggle with myself included honestly there are successful lists that play anywhere from 1 to three and it's pretty difficult to break it down logically drawing L Bellion isn't bad in fact in many ways it's actually a pretty good draw your strongest combos in branded actually involve hard drawing L Bellion the strongest two card combo for example is Al plus L Bellion Le Bellion is also the best card to pair with brendard and High Spirits as the siren it searches is probably the single best discard for High Spirits in the day a Bellion can be a good card to have in your hand after your alra gets ined or Veil it as it can easily make Verte by searching for a bisti and then summoning that bti this isn't something you can just do with the Bisal themselves as there's not always a light or dark master in the graveyard for you to Bish but with lellan you guarantee at least one target in the grave yet if you pay jurus arm in your deck Obion can also be an extra push when going second as you can use the juror to FSE in a gate from your apartment's board before you commit to your regular branded plates also drawing L belly in and then using the hand effect puts Li Bellion into your graveyard which means that when you use branded Fusion you can send a different light monster for albon like cesia or Quan and then still get all of the benefits from the lellan the card combos decently well with cartesia together they can access branded Fusion if you have a banish your Rebellion for your own bestial it's nice to have access to a second copy in a Grind game grass also gets stronger when you have more cards in your deck that are relevant in the graveyard and of course if the pistals themselves were just good hand traps in the format then drawing the bellying can also be a form of non- engine as well now with that all being said a downside of drawing the Bellion is that it's not a starter by itself and if you draw multiples it can be very pricky if your only target to search with the Bellion is the Sania and you draw the Sania then the Bellin will be able to discard itself to the graveyard and it will be stuck in your hand the two card combo of Alaba plus lellan might be really strong but it is easily stopped by hand traps and it does lose especially hard to Max C if your opponent knows how to use it although branded combos can also be more than strong enough to win anyway making the power of the lellan combo is not absolutely necessary playing Joy one just to make the belly in a better draw can also be more of a liability than a benefit as drys is not really an effective hand trap in every matchup and so it can end up being kind of a prick a combo of cesia plus lellan is functional but it isn't actually anything special so it's really only providing more consistency grass Milling Rebellion is not a priority and once you get access to one copy it's the only one copy you'll ever need for the entire game so throwing into additional copies is practically us useless so to put all of this together I would say that overall Rebellion is a strong draw but what it offers can be situational and it's not essential for Brandon's game plan the only Rebellion you really need is that first copy to send to the graveyard with branded Fusion I think the best solution to this in 60 cot branded is to play two lellan along with sirenia and one copy of Magnum that way you have a chance of drawing into lellan but not so much chance that you can a brick on it and you also have a second option to search for if you already have a plan for the sery maybe you send it to the graveyard with gr greno only be you open it in your opening hand if you do decide to play a lot of B deals though like magnote Dr swarm and ball Drake maybe be still regained then Stu Bellion is definitely going to be better for that kind of list I think playing just one copy is missing out on some free Power it's not unlikely that you will break on multiples when you're playing just two I personally really like lellan which is why I often still play three just for fun but I do think that two is probably the more optimal way to play it in a 60 card deck in 40 card branded then space in the deck is pretty tight so I think it makes sense to play just one copy of Lillian along with one copy of sereny one small extra thing to note about Lillian is that you can also special summon it from the hand not just the graveyard this might come up if you have no tets in the deck for the disc card Effect or if the opponent activates droll and another thing to remember is that the card can't be special summoned except by its own summoning conditions so it can't be summoned by sanctifier and if it was to be banished by zantis or soron fallings then it won't actually come back to the field next is Bisal sirenia this is the main actual Bisal that you play in branded all of the other best deals are optional but Sania is mandatory it's mandatory because its graveyard effect can send a retribution or a target for Retribution from the deck to the graveyard which means you can pair this effect with shrouded Dragon to make up both halves of a branded spell of trap this makes the card important for letting you access branded Fusion when you don't have a way to search for it directly you can send Sania from your deck to the graveyard with grand gr's effect so any way to get to cesia can lead to sending Saria to the Grave it in hand so you don't have direct access to branded Fusion a general idea is that if you draw a sh Dragon your grand granal is going to send s and if you draw s your grand granal is going to send shr Dragon together those two effects will let you send retribution to the graveyard and send branded Fusion to the graveyard and then use the retribution to add the Branded Fusion to your hand the same process also sometimes gets used to access other branded spet traps when you already have branded Fusion particularly branded in white and red at l in the cases where you draw sarinia you will need a way to put it into the the graveyard in order to get its effect this isn't trivial but it's also not very difficult you can discard it for opening or keeper or Rebellion or even more cards if you're going second you can also fuse it from the hand with cesia or in rare cases even branded in white the best way to disc cut Seria is with branded in high Spurs these two CS make a very strong combo as the High Spirits can discard the Serenia and then search for the shroud of dragon which means you don't need to have anything else at all in order to get the Branded Fusion you also get a free send of Titanic lap to the graveyard or albio when drawn alongside Heist Birds sarinia is actually one of the best draws in the deck and then when you don't have ice birds sarinia is still a pretty good draw the card is limited to one but it is searchable with the billion so you do have one to three additional copies of Serenia if you want to when the card wasn't limited it was standard to play as many copies as possible this wasn't because Saria was always a crazy draw it's not actually a starter by itself and you never needed the consistency of drawing it as much as possible in start I think the reason why branded liked to play three in the past was because drawing Seria was just never bad if you didn't have a better way to stop playing the sirer would help you start your engine and if you already had a way to play the sirenia could easily be an extender if you didn't need a starter or extender at all then sirenia was still an extremely high value discard for one of your discard effects similar to retribution and then if you did draw it alongside High Spirits or you had the option of searching for High Spirits with Alaba you automatically had a really powerful use for the sereny and really none of that has changed with the card Bell being at one you just less likely to see it so sereny is mandatory in the deck and you should probably play the maximum amount that you can so if it ever comes back off the list you definitely want to add those extra copies into the deck sorry could also be used as a Bisal all of the Bal have this quick effect to banish a light of dark monster from the gray dispat or summon themselves from the hand so when you're going second if the opponent is playing a deck that is weak to Bal like Tia for example aaria is basically just a hter most decks are not weak to pistals though and when you go first you're almost always going to want to discard the Sania for an effect rather than keep it in your hand as a HCHO so I don't think you should ever count Seria amongst your non-engine cards but it is a nice bonus that will sometimes come up Seria gets used as a fisal sometimes as part of your combos so you'll sometimes banish mcua from the GRE guard in order to trigger the mcua to search as well as put the S onto the board which you can then tribute to summon lellan this master comes up because you summoned rbr with branded Fusion or because you m mcua with grass one really cool play that unfortunately never really comes up is using using a bis steel to dodge cold by the grave on your Mercury is an NE gate effect the reason this doesn't come up much is because you don't really have bals available in your hand very often but also because mcua is not a good Target for your opponent's called by the grave most of the time they're going to want to save it for something like branded in red banishment or renm Reviving Elders another thing about sarinia is that it's one of the better meals with grass and you can send either vban or a target for it to add back depending on what else you m if you already M both the retribution and the ideal Target to add back you can use sery to send something else as a free bonus you could send the second retribution for example just to have it available for a Grind game you could send brenon and High Spirits to add back a free discard in the end phase you can set opening to give destruction protection and you can even send lellan as well sending lellan with Sania is pretty rare but theoretically it can be the best play if if you're playing branded regained it can make sense to send a magnum out for example and if you're playing branded Beast then sending branded lost or even branded regained with sanir so that you can place it onto the field with beasts during the end phase is also a sensible play similar to how Dragon link uses those cuts so next is bisti magn magnan is the second most common bisti to play in branded after Serenia generally it's not terrible because the cut is a plus one but the main reason reason why magma can be good even during formats where pis deals are bad is because it's an extra starter or extender when you go second as long as your opponent put one light or dark monster in the gray gear during their turn one combo you can summon magnut during their turn and ins searching the end phase for an engine Cod like Alba shoud dragon or even keeper of dragon magic keeper is notable because it is direct access to branid Fusion on its own so even if you completely Breck going second the mote can stop your Blaze by searching for keeper often though it's better to get alaz or shrouded to help break the oppo's board the search is reliable because the effect activates when magnut is summoned it doesn't activate during the end phase so if your opponent removes the magnut or sets up in a gate later on in their combo you're still going to be able to search and there's nothing they can do about it it's also not likely that the opponent would used to Ash Magnum as it doesn't really feel worth it most of the time to do that same for Maxi and going to use maxi on their own turn one just to get one draw from the magn the only time where your opponent might use these hand traps on maguma during their own turn is when they have two copies so if they ever do that you can use that as a way inferring what else they might have in hand M could be a starter going second but it does of course also have match ups where it's a solid hand trap going second as well against Tia mathme or the mirror match magnote is going to be extra strong as it's going to be a solid disruption as well as a search for an engine card to help push through the opponent's board Maga can also search for other bis deals so if it's better to get another bis deal than an engine Cod you can go ahead and do that as mathmech for example searching a second bis deal in the end phase is going to be extra strong some decks are not necessarily weak to Bisal but can be slightly hurt by them ubel for example doesn't really like having its Spirit of your bell banished or its gray SCA snake Kai will sometimes try to put that IP in the back row with flamb Burge which means you can stop them with magn scen Smith cards are also somewhat vulnerable to this and Labyrinth cards are also pretty acceptable targets as well even if these decks never really lose to this it can still be really good value when you consider that you're also getting the search for an engine car during the end phase something else to consider is that the Magnum on the board is a 2500 beat stick so any deck that normally wants to end on IP appoa or SP l he is going to have to address the fact that you can immediately threaten those cars with your battle pH another thing is that magnut like all Bs can be tributed to summon bellan Bellion can then try to bring out an early branded lost which is a very threatening card when you go second so this will usually Force something out of your opponent overall megga is a pretty strong draw going second even if PS aren't great in the match when you go first though magnumite is actually kind of bad dra ing it doesn't do anywhere near as much as it does going second as the search doesn't happen in the end phase meaning it's incredibly slow you don't really get to use it that often as an extender to banish your on marua as those lines are relatively rare to begin with and it's normally only worthwhile to do that when you have sarinia as its graveyard effect is usually important in the combo the only real use for magnut specifically when you go first is as a better search Target for L Bellion if you're planning on using the bestial as a body to make vered using Magnum instead of Sania is better because you're going to give yourself that free plus one in the end phe saria's graveyard effect is also a free bonus but you can't just search for the sarinia with the magnon and then get the saria's effect as well later on sometimes having Magnum available for this play can make the difference between having enough discards for your discard effects and not proty lines are not super common though to begin with and it's even more unlikely that you will desperately need the Magnum am of over the sery so it's definitely not worth playing magnate just for these lines Magnum going first is not a starter or an extender so it really does qualify as a brick but it's not a bad Breck when you draw it going first as it is a dark dragon for High Spirits and as always in branded you can just discard your bricks for one of the men discard effects that you have also if you end up keeping it in hand instead of discarding it it does have a chance of being a real non-engine card for the opponent's St and even even if not it can be used to help you survive where then contributes to your followup and grinding usually if you have Maga going first you don't want to summon it to your field to get the end phase search on turn one instead you use it like I said on the opponent's turn as a potential hand trap or to block an attack and then use the end phase effect to set a followup on your turn three I think overall it's worth playing mecham most of the time because while it's not good going first it's also not the worst drawing in the world and going second the card is actually really strong since Mega Mod has a lot of different options for it to search including the engine cards it's pretty hard to break going second with magnit Brit struggles more going second than he does going first so playing a card that is a strong boners going second while only being kind of a brick going first is well worth it in my opinion if you're playing in a tournament that has a side deck I think magn is a very easy card to side out for going first and any other environment where you over a fight you're going first you should probably exclude magn from the list I personally like playing this card but I could understand if you want to cut this card to make space in the deck for other things also as always Bal are very difficult to judge in general because their viability in the format changes a lot so if Bisal are really good in the format because of what decks are common then you could set playing magn even when you go first so then foral Dr wor so so pises are good in general because against certain decks a hand trap that can banish a let do monster from the graveyard is an effective form of deception because you can use bis heals from the hand as a quick effect they are able to be used on the opponent's turn one the same way you'd use any other hand trap like as SP or impa against tement for example you can banish the ti names when they try to fuse against math you can Bish Sigma when they try to summon it or diameter when they try to use super factorial against you Bel you can Bish gray squa Yama Rage or a do beckoning beast when they try to revive it with Spirit Gates and in the mirror match it's pretty good to Target Alias of the Bisal or whatever your opponent tries to Target with branded in red when you use Bisal as hups like this they are basically part of your non-engine cards and biso Dru worm is really only able to be used in this way it doesn't have an effect that can help your engine the way that magnon and Sania do so the jewi wor is always just a pist it's it's always a non-engine card when you draw it if the opponent's deck is weak to bals then the jurus wor would be a good draw but if the deck is not weak to bises then the Dr Worm is just a bad drw this is why Dr Worm is often cut from branded decks when bises aren't very good in the format if you do draw Jewish worm in a bad matchup it's still not the worst draw in the world as there are a few uses for it just like magnate it is a do dragon which means it works well with High Spirits and by being being a dark monster it's also able to be used as material for Grano if you Ed Jus worm to block an attack it is slightly more threatening than other bals as it does have its graveyard effect to send away an opponent's monster this makes it a little trickier for them to deal with if your opponent attacks over the Jerusalem they both trigger to get rid of one of their monsters same for if they put it into your graveyard by a card Effect most of the time this isn't going to be super threatening as mosts can easily deal with this effect but it is better than nothing there's also some cute tricks you can do a Jewish worm like summoning it to the field on the opponent's turn and then fusing it away for cesia effect this one let you get the Chey worm's graveyard effect whenever you like so you can use the joy wor as a description even if the Bisal effect to banish a moner from their graveyard is useless in the matchup and you can also do this with super poly sometimes as well in general though these smaller BST just don't amount to much it's still not really worth playing this card if it's not that good as a non-engine cut the best reason in my opinion to play DRS one is just as a target for Lu billian to search for when you go second DRS wor is unique among the bals as its graveyard fight can be kind of like a board breaker so searching for J wor summoning it and then tributing it right away for lellan will let you get the graveyard effect right away to help Force out the opponent's disruption if you're playing a build that has a lot of best steal cards like beast and regained and all three copies of rebellion then the truest one does work well as a recurring form of removal and as an extra Target for one of the many Magnum searches that you can get the more Beast steals you have the more ways you have to trick a regained and the more tributes you have available for Branded Beast branded Beast combos with dra wor pretty nicely as you cont tribute the jurus wor with the Beast to destroy your card which then triggers the jurus wor to send away another card so if you are playing a build like this you should definitely include Dr wor in the deck and you could maybe even play multiple copies depending on how much you already want to rely on the Bisal engine optimal branded though doesn't really play Beast and we gain very ofteno said they also often just play one to two L Bellion so they really shouldn't be playing Jewish worm at all even though the car has a few advantages none of those advantages are really that good and it's important to make sure that you cut down on bricks and support more draws where you can Dre worm definitely is one of the first cards you should cut when looking to streamline your deck as it's definitely not a necessary card to play for your combos but again keep in mind that the viability of all the bises is dependent on the format and then the last bisle is Bisal Bal Drake out of all the Bisal this one is the least common to see in deck lists although in my opinion the card is actually a little bit underrated one thing that b rate does better than jurus worm or magn alaria is being a disruption on the opponent's turn when you go first if you have a b Dr in addition to the regular board going first it's going to offer a solid description with its second effect no matter how much the opponent's deck was it spals in general you do need to have another Lighter dark M ATT tribute the ball J can attribute itself but that's really not that difficult everything in branded is a light or dark and you're always summoning lots of monsters that you can use as butter for the Vol effect something branded ends always appreciate is a way of removing your own mirror Jade after you use it so that you can a second one and bald Drake is a really easy way to do that something you can do with baldr mirade and quen is use the marade to banish an opponent's monster then wait until they speci someone from the extra deck trigger the bul Drake is chaining one but tributing the mirade and then use the quam as chaining two to revive back that same mirade some good cards to banish with Bal Drake are promethian princess Charmers yamama and kit colus and it's also worth remembering that this card can also banish ex de monsters when they are summoned from the graveyard or banished as well playing B Dr in your deck also makes magnote a stronger card going first as well as you can now actually choose to summon it on turn one so that you can search for the B Drake in the end phase to have it available for the opponent's turn if you compare ball Drake and draww wor the disruption effect is clearly a lot better for Bal Drake and it is more proactive and you have agency over how and when you use it whereas jwi one is more passive and you don't have a lot of control over it the big downside to bter and the reason why it's ultimately not played much even in versions that play a lot of bals is that the card is by far the worst Bisal when you go second there's no bonus effect when you use it on an empty board so it often ends up being a vanilla Bisal that is just strictly worse than magnut or trus one B can be a pretty side Deck card as a card that you can side in when your opponent are playing Decks that are weak to bals or just for when you go first in general as it's a pretty good search Target for lellan or Magnum overall though in a standard branded deck without a side deck I don't think you want to be playing BJ so to summarize all of these bals together Bal Drake is really only good going first whereas magnut and drewis worm are really only good going second Bal Drake and drwi one don't really see play in optimal branded decks what magnote often does and sor is the only Bisal that is mandatory to play because its secondary effect is an essential part of your engine in Bisal heavy versions of branded the play Beast and regain playing at least one of every B deal is good in my opinion including ball Drake and you can even play multiple drwi worms as well and then one more time I will reiterate that the viability of bals in general changes with the format so all of this discussion about different B deals could easily be superseded by the possibility of playing bis deal as some of your main non-engine cards so now moving on to branded in white this is your secondary Fusion spell after branded Fusion the way it works is that it can fuse moners from your hand and feel but you have to include at least one Dragon moner amongst materials the card also says that if you specifically use Fallen of albas as material you could also vanish monsters from the graveyard as material as well albas is a dragon so if you're fusing with albas has then you've already met the condition for using a dragon so you don't need to worry about finding another dragon and if you have elbows in the graveyard for this you can use it by only banishing monsters from your graveyard this card has three main uses the first one is as followup on your turn three so often you will find a way to access branded in white at the start of your next turn and use it to stop breaking apart the opponent's board by going into guarding Chimera or Furious dragon or even miror Jor again while under the Branded last window the Second Use is to use it as part of your condo going first and then the third use is as an extra push going second sometimes you will try to resolve this and a branded Fusion in the same term to try and break a big board from your opponent the card can be searched with bust so it's a lot easier to get into play when you go second also it works a lot more efficiently when albas gets summoned to your field by some other effect so when you're going second you can normal summon albas or summon it with deployment and then when your opponent uses that board to negate or destroy it you can follow up with branded and white Brandon and white can also be used as a way to push two hand traps on turn one it's pretty effective against imper and Bor when they use on your Albion and pellion that you summon with branded region as you will still have the albas in your graveyard to push for Branded in white if your brand of fion gets ashed you could sometimes still make marade by using gred and white and there's even ways to play around as completely by using branded in white instead of branded Fusion there are also some specific combos that use branded in White on turn one you'll see those more when we get to the combo section there's actually quite a lot of them all things considered one other situation where Brandon and WIP comes up a lot is when you resolve grass if your opening hand has grass and a way to search for Branded Fusion directly then often what ends up happening is you search for the Branded fusion and then use grass a m retribution plus branded in white you can then add back the Branded in white and use it to push your combo further this called makes your gu game a lot better all you need is a single albz or shrouded Dragon left in rotation and you can then use the banded in white to some of lellan to then recycle your banished resources you can Shuffle back in alares and a lellan itself for a marriage a or you can Shuffle back two copies of alads for furious stke you can put back alons and Titanic Lads as well so you have a lot more Grind game because of this card a quick side about Brandon's Grind game by the way you have a lot of onetime uses for recursion like the retributions the kit and the tragedy and you also have a lot of ability to continuously recycle your engine with lellan sanctifier and Quinn but your grind game is not infinite eventually you will run out of ways to shuffle back lellan for its on effect which once that happens you lose most of your ability to recycle in most noral games lilion stops shuffling itself back by the second or sometimes the third time that you use it as it's usually just not the right play you can make your grind game even better by adding in more copies of kits or retribution or an extra lellan in the extra deck versions of branded that play regained also have an extra way of recycling cards but you don't often need any of this as most of branded games don't go long enough for the limits of your grind game to really cve up in the rare games that you are forced to play a really long Grand game I think there's a lot of skill in the way that you manage resources it's very easy to waste resources in branded when you're not super experienced and the really long Grind game will show this the most in general I will say that if you know how to manage reses unbranded the standard competitive deck list that people play definitely do have enough Grind game so if you find yourself running out of resources often maybe consider trying to manage them a little differently I'll touch on this again later on but for now back to Brandon and white I mentioned that Brandon and white can sometimes play around Ash on turn one El do this you generally need to have access to albas without resolving brand Fusion so you can draw it or you can send it to the graveyard with shrouded you can also search for albas with highp or by banishing the Coura with gold sarcophagus the reason why you need albas is because you want to make mirade which are quite as albas as material sometimes you can make Al or the times L Bellion but the end result should be marid one of the nice things about Brandon and white is that it cannot be ashed and neither can the on summon effects of albian of rebellion so if your opponent is holding Ash for brand of fusion and that you use aler to search for Branded and white instead it is already too late for them to stop you from getting to marriage it branded and white also doesn't have a fusion lock on it the way that Branda Fusion does so something you'll notice after you stop playing around with branded and white on turn one is that you can often follow it up with Verte ver can then use its effect to send that branded Fusion to the graveyard that's done your deck and fusion summon again you can make marade with Verte but if you already have a marade then you can also make sanctifier as well which is still a pretty good monster to have a good end board but his effect also can't be ashed so you can end up making a decent board while completely outplaying your opponent's Ash Blossom generally though this is quite rare as getting set up for a good branded white is not always possible and after the end board you create by going for Branded and white instead of branded Fusion is going to be significantly worse which is often just not worth the risk so if you don't have exactly the right kind of hand set up for Brandon and white and get a strong board in the end then it's probably just worth taking the risk on resolving branet Fusion instead so playing around Ash by using Brandon and white is not that common for going first however it is more likely to be something you might do go SA or late into a Grind game something cool you can do with branded and white is make Guardian Chimera this can be a strong play to make of the start of turn three as it can immediately threaten your opponent's unknown back row especially if you have branded loss and you can easily push for Leal after that unlike branded in bread Kera summoned with branded in white is going to be able to attack directly Kera does require you to use monsters from your hand and field so you can't banish monsters from the grave yet some kind and that applies even if you're using eldas this condition in Chimera overrules the condition on branded in white and then the last thing to mention about branded and white is its secret effect its second effect to reset itself in end phase of its discarded by albis is one of the rarest effects in branded which is why it often gets called a secret effect this isn't too useful but sometimes it comes up by accident so you do want to remember it and notice it when it does come up if you are able to resolve alas in your upon its turn and you have branded in white available in your hand discard it's probably one of the best discards as it will reset itself in the end phase be to then use on your turn sometimes you can even plan around this by adding it to the hand with albon or by adding it back to the hand from the graveyard with retribution if you ever resolving albon or retribution just to give yourself a discard photo for Albert then Brandon or white is definitely the best one to choose it's not normally a good idea to discard Brandon white on your own turn though as it's probably better used as an extender and then the last thing I'll mention about this is that because of the way it's worded you can also reset this card if it was sent to the graveyard by the effect of shrouded dragon as well provided that the shrouded Dragon was in the graveyard when it used its effect this works because shrouded dragon's theme becomes Fallen of elbows while it's in the graveyard one way you can use this is after you was all grass if you Mill shr a dragon but you don't need to use its effect for anything then you can just use its effect to send branded in white to me it to the graveyard and then reset the Branded in white to your field in the end phase it's not very useful but it is free if you didn't have a better use for the shrouded dragon or the Branded in white so overall branded and white is mandatory for the combos but you should really only ever a play one as it is very bricky when you draw don't make the mistake of thinking that multiple branded and white could be a better way of playing through Ash this isn't true it really isn't it's better to just leave this as an optional search Target all right so now let's talk about branded lost this card is what a lot of players think is the most confusing and unintuitive card in the deck branded lost is definitely confusing if you're new to branded so I'll do my best to explain it as clearly as possible the card is usually played at just one copy but it is one of the most important cards in the deck branded L has two effects and they are both equally important the card is a branded which means it is a target for Alaba retribution and kit Etc and the card is also a continuous spell which means it is a target for lellan as well it is generally the best Target for lilion so most of the time when you activate rebellion's effect it will be to bring out branded lost branded Beast gives you extra disruption and branded regain gives you some followup but branded loss gives you extra disruption and some followup because of its search effect if you Fusion summon a monster branded lost has a trigger effect that will you search for elbaz or any monster that mentions it so what you're often able to do is trigger it on your own turn to search for an extender like Shredder dragon or kit and then trigger it again on the opponent's turn to search for a disruption like mcua Thea is the only direct form of disruption you can search for with banded loss but there are situations where searching for L Bears on the opponent's turn can lead to extra disruption as well for example searching elbows so that you can discard it and then revive it or searching for Alva so that you can fuse it away for cia's effect there's also the golden sword Soul which is not very popular but he's also technically A disruption that you can sech troll would B of lost and then when it's your turn again you could even get a third search for some more followup by fan summoning again so branded lost really is kind of like combining beast and regained into one typically when you go first you will try to use C's effect after bringing up branded Lo so that you can trigger its effect to search and typically you will search with shroud of dragon or kit in order to extend your plates kit works by itself as long as you have another card in the hand to put back into the deck but shroud Dragon like we've said before usually needs to be pair with something to make fur the plays that being said on its own it does st draw a card which can be helpful and it can also be used as a way to just put albis into the graveyard which does make your endboard stronger also if you haven't normal swimm yet the Branded love search can be used to get qu mesia as well on the opponent's turn you will usually try to sex from mcua if you don't search mcua the chances are it's because you already used mcua or because the card you search for will be the only card in your hand and you're planning on disc card get for something like alaz or Su poly in which case there's no reason to waste the Mur Canal say sech from a career on your own turn the reason you might want to do this is because you're trying to play around a hand trap like niru like I mentioned before I don't think Niro was a huge concern most of the time but it is still something to consider the could be times where you've just already used all of your extenders that turn so if you've already summoned kit and you've already used shouted then you might as well get them Aura now since it's just safer to have it sooner rather than later when you go second s mcua on your own turn is a more common play as it's going to help you play through your opponents and board pieces like masarina and princess and then sometimes in rare cases you can actually search mcua with branded lost before activating branded Fusion which means you can now potentially negate your opponent's Ash Blossom if they have it branded lost also has this other effect and it's this other part that a lot of players have trible with the first line of this effect sees the activation of your cards and effects that includes an effect that Fusion summons a Fusion Monster cannot be negated what this means is that any of your effects that Fusion summon like branded fion branded in white cesia or Elbas cannot be negated by a card that specifically negates the activation of a Carter effect I brought this up earlier when we talked about branded Fusion the difference between cuts at the gate activations and the cuts that just negate effects and this is especially important when it comes to gred Lost cuts that negate activations like Baron judgment appala and Gamma will not be able to negate your Fusion summon effects while branded lost is on the field whereas cards would only negate effects of a card and not the activation like contain impul skill drain and freezing curses will still be able to negate your cards this is because branded last only protects you from activation the gages again like I said before any card that negates activation specifically will say so on the card so you don't need to memorize anything to learn how this works if you know which of these cards can negate banded Fusion while branded lost is on the field and which can't then I'd say you have a pretty good understanding of what you can and can't do with branded lost something else I mentioned before but might as well mention again now is not to be tripped up by cards that specifically say negate that activated effect or negate the activated effect SS like cold by cross out and disass it these cards are not negating activations they are still just negating effects so branded loss will not protect your effects from being negated by these CS one other thing to keep in mind is that your opponent can still attempt to negate the activation of your Fusion summon effects while branded lost is on the field it just won't do anything at resolution so if you have branded lost on the field your opponent can still chain Baron in response to your branded Fusion it just won't do anything at resolution the Branded Fusion will still just resolve like normal this is a great way to immediately punish firers who don't know how granded lost looks as it can sometimes cause them to completely waste their effects the effects to benefit from this branded lost protection are any of your effects that include a fusion summon in that specific effect so this is branded Fusion branded in white AIA Alis lellan Alon and it's also branded banishment and branded and red even though branded and red doesn't Fusion summon right away and instead returns a card from the graveyard to the hand first it still includes a fusion summon in that same effect which means it benefits from the Branded lost protection and that protection will protect the entire effect including the part that PR turns a cut to the hand the fact that the fusion summon is optional also doesn't change this so if you use Brandon and bread just to add back a card it still can't be negated by Baron if branded loss is on the field and the exact same thing is true for banishment banishment special summons from the gay first and then optionally Fusion summons but because it's all part of the same effect the whole thing can be protected by branded lost in fact branded lost will still protect banishment and branded in bread even if the auction or Fusion summon is not possible because there's a barrier statue on the field for example there are a couple cards that Fusion summon that don't actually benefit from the Branded loss protection he Al Verte anaconda and fusion duplication reason why these cards aren't protected by lost is because their effects are to copy another card's effect at resolution so technically these cards do not include a fusion summon effect so if you act to and send branded Fusion for cost while branded lost is on the field your opponent can still successfully negate and destroy a Verte with bar then after this protection effect Rand L goes on to say also your opponent cannot activate cards or effects when a master is Fusion summoned this way what this means is that after you Fusion summon your opponent cannot use anything in response to the summon of that moner it doesn't mean they can't change the effect that Fusion summons it just means they can't use any effect on the next chain after that mtic is Fusion some so for example if you activate branded Fusion while branded last is on the field your opponent can still chain Max C but when the Branded fusion resolves and you summon let's say albon they won't be able to use anything in response to the summon if you have trigger effects like albon's effect and the Branded lost trigger effect to search then you can go ahead and activate those but because it's still in the new chain in the response to the summon your opponent won't be able to respond and you can add as many trigger and quick effects as you want to this chain your opponent will still not be able to respond until after that one chain has res so another example let's say you have branded lost on the field and your opponent forgets to chain Maxi to branded Fusion while now when you summon albon you can trigger its effective Fusion summon as well as trigger branded lost effect to search but your opponent cannot now chain Maxi as this is part of the next chain after your Fusion summon you can add your own quick effects to this chain like Mar Jade's effect to banish or C effect to fuse or cold by the grave and your opponent is still unable to respond until that chain results there also doesn't need to be any trigger effects at all so you can just use Quick effects in response to your own Fusion summon although you will need to be toed on in order to do this in fact you don't need to activate any effects at all in response to your Fusion summon and your opponent will still be unable to respond to the summon this one chain where your opponent is unable to respond is what I like to call the Branded L window there is one big catch to the Branded lost window though and that is that it will only apply if the effect that Fusion summoned was activated as chain link one so for example if you activate branded Fusion is chanic one or binded last is on the field then when branded fion resoles you will get a branded lost window where the opponent can't respond if you activate Brandon in bread on the opponent's turn as chining one while branded L is on the field then when the Brandon rad resolves and you summon that's say G and Chimera you bull gety branded lost window which means the opponent won't be able to respond till Guardian chimera's effect however if instead your opponent activates let's say on fire and you decide to chain Brandon and Brad as chaining two then when branded ined resolves and you summon Chimera you won't get a branded L window which means the opponent will be able to respond to the effect of Guardian kite Mar making sure that your Fusion summon effects are chic one for Branded lost is an important skill in branded as creating those branded loss windows in order to deny your opponent chances to respond can be very strong when used properly normal spell cards like branded fusion and branded in white are only activatable as chain link one anyway but it's especially important to pay attention to chain links on the opponent's turn as all of your effects to Fusion summon on the opponent's turn are going to be click effects or trigger effects which means they are naturally going to be able to be activated as chaining to or higher knowing exactly when you're going to get branded loss windows and when you're not is crucial for mastering branded something that happens a lot with branded lost and is very flashy when it does is chaining multiple branded lost Windows together if you activate branded Fusion or branded losses on the field to summon Alon you will get a branded loss window because the Branded Fusion would use a chilling one during this branded loss window the albon's trigger effect to fion summon again can activate and so can branded loss trigger effect to search for a monster that mentions albas but since albian saate is an effect that Fusion summons a monster it's possible to get another Branded b window after that effect with sols so as long as you order the chain links correctly with the albon is chain L one and the Branded lost is chain link 2 then you're going to get a second branded lost window after the chain resolves you could even take this further and create three branded loss windows in a row or eight in four all you have to do is make sure that at the start of each new chain there's an effect that Fusion summons a monster the classic way to do this is when you go second into an opponent's board you can activate branded Fusion while branded losses on the field and summon albian the elbon activates in the first branded loss window as one to summon Rebellion which then also activates as one in the second branded loss window to summon miror Jud which then uses its effect in response to its own summon during the third branded loss window to banish an opponent's monster and the opponent is unable to respond the entire time this is also something you could do on the opponent's time in order to guarantee resolving certain effects that would otherwise be preventable like maxi banishment or brand of bread all of which are vulnerable to cold by the GRE if you're playing a lock like requium or CIA then something you can try to do is set up your board so that you can always perform the luck during the Branded L window that way your opponent can't use cold pie or Gamma or chocolate to stop your sanctifier effect overall these branded lost windows are in my opinion what makes branded lost one of the strongest cards in the deck something else I should mention is that just like how branded losts protection effect doesn't apply to Verte and fusion duplication these two cards also won't create branded loss Windows even when they use as chain link one the reason for this is because branded loss says that your opponent cannot activate cards or effects when a monster is Fusion summoned this way this way refers to the first part of the effect which protects your fuse and summon effects from having the activation negated since rote and duplication don't benefit from the Branded lost protection they also don't create branded lost Windows when they result so since branded lost is easily brought out from the deck for free using the Bellion it makes a lot of sense to say that you don't want to draw it as you would have most likely had access to it for free anyway Bellion can get a second copy of lost however lost effect to search is a hard one per turn so there's not a lot of benefit to having a second copy on the field it does make you hard for your opponent to remove but that's a very slight advantage and you'd have to be playing two copies of lost in the first place if you play another Target for Rebellion like Beast or regained then drawing branded loss can actually be really good as you're not wasting the bellion's effect now and you will have a stronger field in total but most branded decks don't play Beast of regain especially at the competitive level as they're not necessary for you to win and they're also just extra bricks in the deck playing one Beast or regain just for the times that you drw draw a brand at last is also not really a smart strategy as you're not going to be drawing your one copy of last very often especially in 60 card branded so when you consider these reasons it makes sense that you still only want to play one L the card is also not a starter as it does nothing on its own which is another huge reason to not play more than one of the card that being said there are a lot of benefits to drawing banded loss instead of placing it on the field with lellan firstly most of the time that you go to be accessing lellan is by sending it to the graveyard with branded fusion and attributing albon from your field this means you've already resolved at least one Fusion summon before getting to branded lost in order to then trigger the Branded lost to search that turn you need to have a way of fusion summoning again which is not something that you always have in every hand if instead you drew the Branded loss directly then you would have been able to activate it before using the Branded Fusion which means you would have been able to get the search from branded lost without needing that additional way to Fusion Simmon in hands like this branded lost acts as a very welcome extender also branded lost helps play around certain hand traps because of the Branded lost Windows that it creates so it's good to have that available before you use your brand of fusion Bal and DD Crow as well as sometimes gamma imp and B can all be denied their best use by branded lost when you those second branded lost can be an even better draw as it immediately threatens to push through boards quite easily using branded loss Windows the Branded loss protection also Mees a c like Baron and Savage dragon no longer work on your branded region or Elbas effect so your opponent is very much pressured to remove the Branded L as soon as possible also if your opponent is going to negate every one of your attempts to get to branded Fusion then you're likely not getting to lelly in anyway which means you're not getting to the Branded loss for free so drawing it in that position isn't redundant at all in fact it's only helping to potentially break the opponent's board another thing to keep in mind is that going for albon and attributing it for Rebellion is not a mandatory play if you already have branded loss then it could be stronger to go for a different line for these reasons you can make a good argument for why drawing banded L is pretty good and why you could consider playing more than one copy if you ever played branded you've probably experienced hard drawing branded loss to be really good sometimes there are definitely some end boards that you have no chance of beating without the help of branded loss to Unique effects also if you would to play all three copies of lust it wouldn't be as crazy of an idea to play one regained or one Beast as a way of still making use of the bellion's effect when you draw branded lost I think that playing multiple branded lost is a pretty smart idea especially for getting an edge in the competitive scene however it's definitely not something that you have to do what one of the best branded players that I know is abah hamud he is one of the players that I currently see playing three lost in his deck lists and this is exactly what he had to say about it the biggest downside to playing multiple L is that it's adding extra engine cuts to the deck especially if you also play that second target for the Belling which takes away the amount of slots you have available for a non-engine the card is also not a stata which means it contributes to Bricks overall and playing three lost is something you can do in 60 card branded especially during metas where the best techs and Boards have a lot of activation negations like apple Losa but outside of those matters it's probably best to keep the deck that'ss available for more non-engine and then in smaller builds like 40 cut branded I don't recommend playing more than one copy of lost at all here's what another really strong branded player ttk had to say about it so now moving on to Fusion deployment this card is pretty simple especially compared to branded lost it's a good extender that can specious summon either cesia or alar from your hand or deck when you go first using deployment to summon cesia is a really good way of extending good plays and cesia can also be paired with cards like shroud dragon and Seria to start your plays as well it's usually preferable to get cesia onto the field right away so that you can use it to play around imper and Bor on your normal and deployment makes this really easy as it just special some as the cut cesia from your deck without requiring any setup this is why deployment is often a better draw than the cesia itself as cesia requires an alaz in your field or graveyard in order to be special summoned cesia can be normal summon or you'd rather not do that as there are better monsters to use as your normal summon like aliber or keep it if you draw cesia and fusion deployment something you can do is to use deployment to summon albas from the deck which allows you to then splash or summon the cesia from your head hand this could be helpful as getting access to albas like this gives you more options on what you can summon with p's effect most of the time CIA Mak granal but if you have albas you can sometimes make an albas fion like Bellion albon or even sanctify this can actually make your place less reliant on branded Fusion as you're able to access your boss monster marade without needing to resolve branded Fusion also getting an extra alas into rotation means that you have a stronger end board as long as that gets into the graveyard this isn't something you should always do though as it's important to keep your hand size in Mind by choosing to summon ALB instead of a second cesia and the special summoning cartesia from your hand you're using one extra card from your hand which means you have one less card available for discard effects like Lillian a lot of the time I find that it's better to just summon a second copy of cesia from the deck and then keep the one in hand as a discard something important about Fusion deployment is that it locks you into only something fusion monsters from the extra deck that turn this luck is worded in the exact same way as branded Fusion it will still apply even if the car's effect is negated and it also locks you retroactively so if you link sumon Verte first you're no longer allowed to activate deployment this lock is important as it means you can't make ver plays using deployment something that it would actually be really good at if it wasn't for this lock when you to Second Fusion deployment often gets used to summon Alvis from your deck to help break an opponent's for this can be a lot more effective than normal summoning alas as it means you can normal summon other cards to either B your opponent to case first or push play too afterwards as a general rule you can look at deployment as usually summoning cesia when you go first and alas when you go second but you should also keep in mind that summoning cesia going second can very often be a better play than summoning elbar Fusion deployment is also a normal spell card which means it's a target for thrust this is something you would do sometimes going second and it's even possible to do it going first as well if your opponent uses something like Gamma or bestial or a Buu anything that puts a monster onto their board as a hand trap then you can use thrust to add deployment and then summon albas with it from your deck to fuse with those cards into albon or Furious Dragon also deployment can be copied with Fus and duplication this is something that comes up surprisingly often if you're not able to get to branded Fusion because your opponent hand chap to you but you did start your turn with Fusion deployment then you can use thrust to set duplication and then copy the deployment on your opponent's turn to summon Elis from the deck As A disruption another thing to remember is that deployment is technically a target for Verte so in some rare circumstances you can use Verte to summon cesia or alibas from the deck if you're summoning albas this way you won't be able to use its effect as you're not able to spash or summon anything anymore after using birday but this play can still be sometimes useful for something very specific like combining it with banishment out Pusa or Mega clubs Fe deployment is also searchable with keeper of dragon magic so in the cases where you already have access to branded Fusion key is used to search deployment instead also alal lenus is capable of searching for deployment as well in order for Fusion deployment to work you do need to have a Target in the extra deck to reveal this isn't a problem for albz but often it will be a problem for cesia as a lot of lists only play one grand grol so after you use it you can no longer use deployment to summon cartesia since deployment is usually one of the first cards you use this isn't normally an issue but it can come up if you draw into the card later on or if you use High Spirits to send away your only Grand gral during the draw phase when it comes to summoning albas with deployment something small I like to do with the reveal is to always try to reveal a different monster than the one I intend to Fusion summon with that Al's effect it's a very small thing but you never know how familiar your opponents are with branded so there's a chance that they don't know some of the materials required for certain Alibi fusions so there is no need to remind them by revealing the card often I like to reveal a most that that would be legal to summon with ALB but isn't the one that I intend to summon just in case it confuses my upon it into thinking but I'm trying to summon that monster overall it's pretty clear that deployment is a staple free of in every branded deck there appears to be no dispute over them it's one of the best extenders and it's also one of the most reliable extenders as well the work's going first and going second and it's very close to being a starter as well as it only really need the single Lio D moner to be paired with it in order to do something I've not seen any lists ever play less than three even smaller lists like 40 cart branded still play all three copies and there's no reason why they shouldn't moving on to Nadia servants this is a card that not every branded deck plays but that doesn't mean it's not a very strong card Ander is a pretty good extender you can send any of your albas fusions from the atra deck to the graveyard like albon or Titanic Le so that you can then get their effects in the end phase and in the card also searches for a dogmatica monster since quam is always treated as atic Monster you can you can also search for quam with this cut the fact that you can only search for moners with eal or lower attack than the monster you sent to the graveyard doesn't really matter since the Allies fusions are all bigger than any of your targets T and quem is sometimes the right play but most of the time you're going to want to search for Maximus with this card if you're playing it Maximus is really strong as it's basically a way of letting the servant send two musters from the extra deck to the graveyard instead of just one maxus can special summon itself from the hand so if you don't need to have your normal summon available to make full use of this card standard way to use this card is to send Gora and search for Maximus but Gora draws a card and the Maximus can then banish Gora to special summon itself Maximus can then send two mosters from your extra it to the graveyard which can lead to a lot of power for Branded plates most commonly you can Ascend albon plus Titanic glad with the rolls or other options you might send if you have the right Targets in the graveyard already like GR all Ren brm and Sprint media servant is a very unique and self-contained extender which is one of the best parts about the cut it's able to extend your turn one combo at any point so no matter where you get disrupted the deer is pretty much going to work as an extra push if your Al gets impounded then the deer can extend if your branded Fusion gets ashed Thea servant can extend if you get hit with niru Nadia servet can extend and if your opponent has no hand traps and and you're able to complete a fulltime one combo then the deer is likely still going to be able to extend and make your Bo even stronger even if it's just by drawing one card with Gora and then also if you have no other play to begin with the dear servant can make an acceptable play by itself which makes the cot a stter as well the deer is definitely the weakest stter in the deck you can typically set up two to three disruptions with some followup but it is not much compared to your other stats a 7 is technically playable without Maximus however it does lose a lot of its power deer on its own without Maximus can make a very similar play however it does require you to use a normal sumon which makes it strictly a starter and not an extender with maximus in the deck the D servant in your hand represents one draw a 3K body on the board as well as two sends from the extra deck to the gradient whereas an AA servant without maximus in the deck represents just one one send from the extra deck and a search for Quin which you then have to normal summon to get value from a de servant can also search for alz however you're not able to use its effect that turn as Nadia also lcks you out of summoning anything from the extra deck for the rest of the turn you're also not able to draw a card with gura if you're searching for alz as Gora has less attack than alz this doesn't mean you won't ever search for albas though as sometimes it's good to get albas to use as material for cesia on your opponent's turn or as a discard for High Spirits the extra deck Lo definitely holds this card back a lot as it makes it only really usable as your last extender so even though the card is able to extend your combo at any point it does usually have to be your last extender this means that you're not able to use it mid combo or at the start of your combo which drastically reduces the effectiveness of the Gora draw it's stly possible that you will draw into a card that can't be used now because you're locked out of the deck it also means you won't be able to fuse and summon during the end phase which is something that branded often does the luck works the same way as the luck on branded opening it is part of the effect so it won't apply if the C is ashed and it also doesn't luck you retroactively because of this I've heard some branded players say that you can bait Ash Blossom with Nida the idea is you activing newa first your opponent chains Ash and then you can use branded Fusion after in practice this is not a good idea as it loses pretty hard if the opponent doesn't chain Ash and it's also more likely that they don't have Ash than that they do the better way to play this is just to use the Branded Fusion first and if the opponent has Ash then you can still use the Nadia 7 to make a small board if the opponent doesn't have Ash then need it to resolve branded fusion and you can still resolve the ns7 as well afterwards most obvious downside to using the ds7 in your deck is you have to play Maximus which is a pretty bad prick but the biggest downside in my opinion is actually that it's much worse going second that it is going first when you go second having the option to change up the order of how you use your card is really valuable for things like baiting and enforcing your opponent's interaction ideia C do that because of his extra deck look so it has to be the last extender that you activate also the cod's value doesn't really show Until the End phase which means is too late to use as bait something that comes up a lot going second is fusing in end phase with cost like Titanic lad to summon alass which is a play you can't do if you're locked out of the extra deck also your Maximus is a lot easier to remove from the field before it activates when you go second something else to consider is the extra deck room that Nadia 7 takes up the Branded extra deck is very tight and for Nadia to be played optimally you definitely need to be playing Carrera Carrera is often in the deck regardless adds it the target for super poly as well as granal but it is sometimes not played and if your list isn't running it you don't want to be forced to just to make N7 good if there was a lot of extra room in the extra deck deer and Maximus could actually be made Stronger by playing cards like entis and Malon entis comp a card and Malon can bouncer card these would be great additional targets that could help media be a stronger going second however you really can't play them as there's just not enough room in the extra deck another downside to nidea is that Maximus can actually be risky going first as it also lets your opponent sent two cards from their extra deck to the graveyard against certain matchups this can be beneficial for your opponent voiceless voice for example plays entis and heral tia plays Gora and kitas and the brand of Mira has all of their Elbas fusions as well some stun and cure decks will also play C like Gora and antis this can be a huge swing if it comes up as your opponent is getting a lot of value for free generally I like to play Nadia servant in my side deck for tournaments that have them and any other situation where I know I'm going first the card is very strong going first as its ability to extend at any point without ever being redundant is super valuable for regular ladder though you can make a good argument that the card is too bad going second to be worth playing one interesting kind you can play with Nadia is despian Lulu W this card works well as it can be an alternative scend for Nadia or Maximus and it allows you to special summon quen cesia or even Ecclesia from your deck in the end phase this can be valuable as while Brendon already has ways to special summon Quan it doesn't actually have an equally easy way to summon cesia and if you play Ecclesia you can add an extra Dimension to your end board as Ecclesia can summon alas from the deck during the opponent's turn Lulu doesn't see play though for the same reason as most xjack options don't which is that there isn't really enough space for it one other thing to mention about Nida is that it usually works better when you play two quen so if you are playing the de you should consider of playing two quen so that you can use certain lines overall I think the D is worth playing if you want to but you could consider cutting it because it's just not so good C second in a situation where you have a side deck though I think the deer and Maximus are definitely worth playing at least in the side deck as missing out on this going first feels like a mistake and then Maximus this is the Breck you have to play If an AA it might not be the worst drawer in the world when you look at it but very often it's pretty bad as you don't want to actually banish any of your Fusion mosters from the graveyard except for Gora as everything else needs to stay in the graveyard to get its end phase effect most of the time when you draw this you'll just end up using it as a discard and it'll probably be the worst card in your hand one thing you can do sometimes that is a decent play is summoning it by banishing albon most branded decks play two copies of albon so what you can do is banish the first one and answer in the second copy with Maximus that way you're still able to get albon's end phase effect as well as some other end phase effect like Titanic leet aimus is also a valid discard for High Spirits although it is only a spellcaster so it's still not that strong of a play you would only ever play one of this and you'd only ever play Maximus alongside in the D servant package now moving on to branded and High Spirits this is one of the starter cards in branded but unlike most of your other starters High Spirits is pretty unique in that it doesn't really have a main way in which you're supposed to use it for turn one combos alabra pretty much always searches for Branded Fusion deployment always summons cesia NAD always search as for Maximus but High Spirits often makes lots of different plays as it depends a lot on what other cards you have in hand and what carde you plan to discard with it because of this burnit High Spirits ends up being one of the more difficult cards to use optimally the Wiest card works is that it reveals a monster in your hand and then sends a Fusion Monster with 2500 attack or defense from your extra deck to the graveyard with the same type as the muster in your hand you can then optionally send the mustard from your hand to the graveyard and search for fallen of Al Bears or any monster that mentions it this is a great way to get a lot of different plays going as you're going to be able to get value from the search as well as get value from the fusion mozer you sent to the graveyard and in the best cases you will also get value from the card you discarded from your hand as well so the power ceiling on this card is pretty high and is actually pretty similar to branded Fusion in that it splits your plays into multiple parts so it's very hard to stop you from playing completely after you resolve High Spirits the best cause to discard with High Spirits are dragon monsters this is because the best monsters you want to send from the extra to the graveyard are the albas fusions Titanic lead and album both of which are dragons since High Spirits has to send a Fusion Monster with the same tipe you need to have a dragon in your hand in order to send either of these to the graveyard there's a lot of dragons in the Branded deck which makes this fairly consistent there's albas shroud of dragon keeper of dragon magic as well as the rebellion and every single pisal setting Titanic clad with High Spirits is good because it can summon quam from your deck during the end phase quam is good because it adds extra disruption to your end board as it can revive miror Jade albas got easier it can also send alass to your graveyard if you don't already have one and sometimes clim can also be used as a way of getting enough discards in your hand for things like super poly and elas by sending retribution or Cartesian sending Titanic bads with High Spirits also means you don't have to send it with grand grel so you can use it to send something else instead and you're also never going to be relying on resolving Grand granel second effect to access your Clen since you're going to get it in the end phase from that Titanic Li you could also summon albas with Titanic clad so if you're going second it can be pretty good to summon albas and fuse with whatever your opponent still has on that field during the end phase sending albon with heper is is also really good as it can set up any of your important deceptions like branded in red banishment branded King even retribution in the case of setting branded banishment be aware that you can't revive the albon with the banishment as it wasn't properly summoned first so it can't be revived from the graveyard or from banish in general this rolling is very important for Branded any monster sent from the actra de to the graveyard by mirade High Spirits granino or Nadia aren't properly summoned which means they can't be specied by anything this is pretty basic for experienced rented players but it is something I've seen a lot of newer players misunderstand to be good with Brandon you really do need to master this rolling so that you never make a mistake with it one nice thing about albon and Titanic Le being the best sends for heist Spirits is that you can send either one with any dragon initial disc cut so if you already have a way to send Titanic lead you could send albon if you already have a way to send albon you can send Titanic lead this choice can also be very important for playing around certain hand chaps often you will send Alon to the graveyard even though you plan on summoning another albon later just because it plays better around Ash on your branded Fusion out of all the dragon discards Alba shrouded and lellan are good ones as lellan could summon itself from the graveyard and albas and shrouded are always good to put in the graveyard for lots of different reasons the best C to pair with high birs overall though is probably Seria Saria is best because it's the only one that allows you to access branded Fusion without using any other cards when it's discarded the sarinia can send retribution to the graveyard and the car that you can search for with High Spirits can be shrouded Dragon using the shrouded Dragon to then send the Branded Fusion to the graveyard means you could add it back with the retribution and you also get to draw a free card in the process not to mention sending Titanic left to the graveyard as well since kit is an option you can search for with High Spirits technically any discard is able to access branded Fusion however kits effect acqu you lose one of the cards in your hand whereas the sirenia combo doesn't instead it even draws an extra card and it also doesn't lose the Imp and veiler the way that kid does also the S your combo doesn't use your normal summon so it's a great way to play through a hand trap on your normal summon of valiv or keep it I mentioned that there is really a main target to search for with High Spirits and this is true we'll often SE for sh Dragon like in the Sania combo but when it comes to pairing highp with other cards you will pretty much equally often search for kit and cier and quam are not uncommon either sh dragon is often searched so they can send retribution as one half of your branded spell and you can also search it to send to albas in order to make Cuts easier or branded in White Lies TR dragon can also be a way to draw a card if you're going second and your hand is bad and you need to draw dra into a specific C to have a chance then searching for shrouded dragon is a way to try and do that similarly if you're going first and you really need to draw an extender after your first play got stopped then shr dragon can give you that chance if the card you search for doesn't actually matter because you already have all your other plays or the important part of using the High Spirits was just to put an extra Deck monster into the graveyard then shroud dragon is usually the card you search as it's just a free drill and you get a free send something like retribution spren kit is the card that you normally search for with High Spirits when you don't have any other way to access branded Fusion kit is the worst way to get to branded Fusion as you have to give up on one of the cards in your hand but it is usually better than not resolving branded chusion at all so if you're discarding something that isn't sirenia there's a good chance that you want to search for Kit since High Spirit sends Alba fusions when you're EXT out to the graveyard K can also use its effect to special summon itself from the hand instead of just normal summoning this gives you more options for stronger combos as you can potentially normal summon something else later on your combo after resolving branded Fusion or you can use this special summon as a way of playing your out Ash by making ver any of the normal summon alongside a special summon kit means you can link inverte and use its effect send branded fusion and sumon M in the cases where you do this the kit doesn't need to search for Branded Fusion so it Cana be used to get something that makes your end board stronger like branded lost branded in red or you didn't branded banishment something important to keep in mind is that when you're going for these biry lines with High Spirits it's almost always better to send albon to the graveyard instead of Titanic lead since the Verte Lu will prevent you from special summoning anything else so you won't be able to use Titanic lad to summon a quem during the end phase however you will still be able to sit with Alia another option to search with Spirits is quem this works pretty well when you pair the High Spirits with shrouded Dragon instead of using the shrouded dragon in the hand for a random draw you can instead send it to the graveyard with High Spirits to search for clam and then use its effect in the graveyard to send ration from there you can normal summon the qu and use its effect to send brand of fusion because High Spirits is a quick Place SP one thing you can do when discarding shrouded dragon is to actually use the shrouded dragon in your hand first to send retribution for cost and then chain the High Spirits to discard the shrouded Dragon before it goes to the bottom of your deck you won't get to draw one but the benefit of doing it this way instead of discarding first is that the shrouded will stay in the graveyard rather than going to the bottom of the deck this can be useful for making cars like cesia and branded in white life as well as just keeping the shrouded Dragon around for the next turn where it could potentially be used as followup by sending another copy of Retribution cesia is another decent Target for High Spirits typically this is good to search for when your discard is either alaz or shrouded dragon as you can use the CIA to then special summon itself from the hand since there is now an alaz in your graveyard this is a good play to do before you normal summon as the cesia will then protect your normal summon from imper and vea similar to how Fusion deployment is used when you going second sometimes searching for albas with heper can be good as it can be normal summon for its effect as a board breaker or even p with super pulley for a really strong board break and then the last code you can search for in most branded decks will be mcua this is probably the least likely card you can have search for with high spirits but it is something that you will sometimes do some combos will choose to add High Spirits to the hat in the end phase with albon instead of setting something would be intention of using that High Spirits right away in the end phase to discard a dragon and search for mcua the mcua acts as an extra piece of disruption for your nboard and the heist Birds gets to send Titanic which will then also summon Quinn so while dragons are the best discards for High Spirits you can also discard spellcasters to send Gran grol from your extra deck to the graveyard sending granal is not as good as Titanic lad albon but he does still have a graveyard effect and you won't always draw a dragon to pair with your High Spirits cesia quam and Maximus are all spellcasters so they're all valid discards for High Spirits too and what's interesting is that certain hand Jabs like draw and veila are also spellcasters which means they can be discarded for High Spirits as well in the case where you discard a spellcaster the car that you send from the extra deck to the graveyard will always be granal and since Grand Bal is not an albas Vision it means that if you search for Kit you won't be able to special summon it which means those verot lines are not possible with a spellcast a discard you can also discard winged beasts with High Spirits by sending RnB from your exodite to the graveyard so mcua is a valid discard as well and if you're ever playing DD Crow you can even use those as high spur as this cards as well sending RBM can be surprisingly strong as it being in the graveyard means that a you can also get Elbas into the graveyard then you have a strong deceptive play on the opponent's turn already mirade will normally send rroom with this effect anyway but having renr already in the graveyard and potentially have a stronger board turn one even if your turn one combo gets hand trapped to death RRM is also an alas Fusion so it does allow for kit to special summon itself I think heps is at its best when it's used as an extender through hand trips as the lines that involve using heps that should only play are pretty susceptible to hand chips except for the Seria combo specifically when you get to resolve High Spirits and another St to card like Alber or keeper your endboard ends up being really strong most of the time so so overall he spr is a strong extender an acceptable starter and most of the time just an allaround powerful card as long as you draw a Target discard with it the card is also pretty good for being able to play around Ash there are times where you can search for high SPS with Alaba instead of branded fion with the intention of going cot line to play around Ash rather than your normal L this is something we saw our branded player do at least a few times at the latest World Championships and even though it didn't really work out for them it's definitely a plan that can reward you to do if you do it at the right time the biggest downside to High Spirits is that the card doesn't work on its own and instead needs to be paired with other specific cards to work which makes the card very pricky when you don't draw a card to pair with it realistically High Spirits is only really good when paired with a dragon so the amount of cards you have to pair with High Spirits is probably going to be somewhere between 5 to 16 in 40 codex you're likely have just five or six dragons which isn't a lot and in 60 card decks you can sometimes have upwards of 15 or 16 which is also not that many considering the bigger deck size although it is more than in the 40 card deck there are a lot of spell cards in most branded decks and some of your monsters are not viable discards for high Sprints either Maxi and Ash can't be used and neither can Al or tragedy so in the end you do still have a lot of possible hands that can draw High Spirit without a good discard or even no card to pair with it at all which does reduce the appeal of the card by quite a lot that being said there are a lot of specific combos as you'll see in the spreadsheet where we actually don't need a target for Hep in the hand in order to make use of it because we will search for one later branded in High Spirits also has a grave GE effect which is exactly the same as cesas you can add it back to your hand from the graveyard in the end phase during the turn of Fusion Monster was Center unlike cesia though you can't use both effects of highper in the same time so you're not able to add it back right away in the end phase after using the first effect instead you'll have to wait until your opponent's end phase and you're also not able to activate the first effect right away after adding it back in your own end phase the use for the second effect of highp is pretty much just as discard futter so if you don't use the first effect of High Spirits during your combo you have the option of getting a free discard in the end phase by sending High SPS to the graveyard with something like cenia shrouded Dragon Quin or grass it's pretty rare that you will activate High Spirits a second time during a grand game as there's almost always better uses in later turns for cards that pair with it and you're also not likely to have that many options available in your extra deck so in Long games especially ones that involve grass it's not uncommon for multiple copies of High Spirits to just accumulate into your hand and at that point their only purpose is to be discarded for C like albas and bl belly one thing to keep in mind about High Spirits is that its effect to send from the ack to the graveyard will trigger Quin which is something that could matter for sequencing your place if you have a qu edge of normal summon it's probably a good idea to summon it first so that you can tricker it second effect to revive when you use the High Spirits this idea is something you can do with n servant as well High Spirits can also be used under an ads serent lock or a ver look as the card doesn't speci some anything Al a lot of the combos that shall see in the spreadsheet later on will involve using highp in the end phase to trigger Quin and the last thing that's important to mention about this card is that since it's a quick play you can also use it in the draw phase to play around draw and luck bir although you definitely should not always use the card like this as like I said it's often much better to save the card for extension after you see whether or not your other stats is resolved something else you can do is chain High sprits to droll so if you get drawed on another search like your ala then you could chain the High Spirits to the draw in order to still get the search so overall highs is a very strong card in redded its extension abilities are really valuable and the card is a good contributor to your overall consistency as well because he doesn't need your normal summon the card is similar to in the D servant in a sense that it can extend in a lot of different situations and using it to play around Ash Blossom is pretty nice as well a lot of smaller branded decks will choose not to play High Spirits or at least to play just one copy of High Spirits as a search Target this is a reasonable Choice as the card does have break potential and 40 card branded will usually play last copies of cards that pair with it like besal and shat Dragon I think playing one copy is still good in these lists just to make use of that free discard option as well as to allow you to do all of the set combos that require searching for heis bir specifically in bigger branded decks though I think it's probably a mistake to not play all three I played 60 C branded with three High Spirits for a long time and I think most top branded players agree that this card is good so now for Fusion duplication this card can copy branded Fusion from your graveyard during your opponent's turn which is pretty strong as it can summon a mirror Jade on the opponent or a furious dragon or a draco telia all of which are deceptions by themselves but it's also a lot more than just that by performing a fusion summon on the opponent's turn you will get the tricker branded lost as well as trick Quin and you can also use duplication as a way of putting elbaz into your graveyard that you might not have had already this can translate into even more deceptions as you can now revive it with Ren will Quin you can also send CA like tragedy and sirenia to the graveyard to generate follow for your next turn if you need it the cut is pretty good the draw when you go first as you can just set it and it will make your end board automatically stronger however the main reason this card is played is to be set from your deck with triple tactics thrust the idea is that if your opponent uses a monster hand when you go first like Maxi Ash bossom or vea you can use thust to set Fusion duplication from your deck first has a lot more application going second as the cut gets stronger when your opponent has monsters on the board but it use going first is a lot more limited as it can only really set trap guns Fusion duplication is the best in engine trap card that you can play for thrust branded does have a few options for setting trap cards going first like banishment and branded King but Fusion duplication is by far the best option one of the reasons why setting duplication with thrust is so strong is that it lets you keep playing on the opponent's turn even after your turn one Como gets stopped completely one of standard's biggest enemies is Ash Blossom and duplication help you play through Ash on your branded Fusion in a situation like that if you have no other way to extend you're not going to have a target for banishment or branded King so setting up those cards with thrust would be useless but Fusion duplication only needs the Branded Fusion in the graveyard to be useful the back of this Crow can create followup not just disruption is really important too as it means you can fully get back into the game after completely passing to a hand the best way to use this card is going to depend on what the rest of your end board looks like it's very possible that this card can lead to a lot of extra deception but it will also often just lead to a single bandage with mirror Jade as well one of the downsides to duplication is that your branded Fusion will get banished when you use it this isn't great because it limits your followup as you can no longer use retribution or tragedy to get back your branded eing however you can still use kit to get it back since kit can still add from back finished that being said if you had to use your kit on turn one bing your branded Fusion is likely Gone Forever however it is also true that you don't always need branded Fusion again to win the game it's very common to use duplication on your opponent's turn and then still overwhelm them and win on your next turn without even using branded Fusion again duplication is at its best when it's copying branded Fusion but you can also copy certain other cards like Fusion deployment and super polymerization as well this could be really important for when you have thrust or the duplication in your hand but the opponent's hand trap actually stops you from even getting to branded Fusion in the first place using duplication on deployment let you special summon albas on the opponent turn from your deck which is pretty strong and in some cases can actually be even stronger than duping branded Fusion duping super poly can also be useful and it's worth noting that you don't need to discard a card if you do D super poly so you can sometimes super poly your opponent twice with the same super poly but also keep in mind that duplication doesn't stop your opponent from being able to respond when targeting Super Bowl another downside to duplication is that it's not always that useful going second as it is a trap cut so it doesn't really help push to a board especially against once the Teran Army negates like Savage dragon Blazer and Vortex Dragon which can be used on your turn once and then just again on the opponent's turn to negate the duplication duplication is already strong but it actually gets a lot stronger of a card if you're playing a fli gate monster in your deck like Christia Bean or orus reason for this is that duplication can set up any lock by itself as long as there is a light spellcaster somewhere amongst your field graveyard banishment or hand the way you do this is by using dupe to copy branded Fusion which sends albas plus your flood gate monster from the deck to the graveyard to summon either albon or lellan depending on whether your Floodgate monster is a light or dark from there the lellan or albian just needs to be able to summon sanctifier for you to be able to set up the lock sanctifier requires a light spellcaster which is why you need to have a light spellcaster around somewhere for this to work it's important to remember that libelling confused with materials from the field graveyard are banished putting not the hand so if you light spellcaster is in your hand you will have to discard it as cost for lellan effect also if you are summoning albon remember that you can't fuse a m that is banished so the light spellcaster will need to be in your hand field or grave yet your light spellcasters by the way are Quan cesia Maximus and granal granal is easily forgotten about and this is often a way to recycle it with Rebellion if you banish it by triggering its effect earlier on in that turn and then also affect baa if you're playing it this worked really well with gming puppet Nightmare and a lot of players used to play three copies of duplication in the deck just to have a consistent way to dolop their opponent now though I think a lot of branded decks are playing just one as they're not really playing as many Floodgate monsters although you could reasonably still play three and a foot gate mosa and it would still be very strong in best of three environments you can choose decide additional copies of D for going first which is something that I like to do a lot although I also do like the main deck or free copies anyway I don't think it's worth cutting this card it's nice to have the option of playing two hand traps going first and even if you're not playing a Floodgate at all a c is definitely not a brick it helps to play through hand traps next is foolish burial this sc's function in branded is really really simple it's just that is in tragedy which then searches for Alaba making your foolish burial functionally just another copy of Al aliver is the best daughter in the deck so it makes sense that you would play an extra copy where you can if foolish burial wasn't limited I think you'd probably play more than one copy probably all three as it's basically just another copy of Aliva which is your best stter technically foolish is an even stronger draw than aliver since the tragedy in the graveyard is free follow-up or free fusion material however it does have a certain downside compared to drawing ala directly like playing hard into droll and called by the grave you do have to play The Tragedy to make foolish work which is also a prick but it's well worth to have it for the extra consistency also as I mentioned before tragedy isn't the worst brick to draw as it does have a few good uses if you already have Alaba then foolish can send other useful cars like serin or shrouded dragon in order to send a retribution or another car to add back with the retribution you can also send albas or even tragedy anyway just to get its reset effect instead of its sech effect you might be unable to send tragedy because you drew it which definitely feels bad but it's definitely not a reason to blame more than one tragedy my favorite alternative used for foolish is sending shrouded dragon and then using shrouded Dragon to send aell trap from my hand to the graveyard so that the shrouded Dragon then gets special summon to the field this can be good for making a bir play or just pushing for leave another thing to remembera is that tragedy can also search for quen so occasionally you might use foolish as a way of searching the quen although it's not likely to come up over Al remember that tragedy triggers when banished as well so under Dimension shifter or microcosmos foolish burial surprisingly enough has the exact same function of searching Alaba and then lastly foolish can be searched with thrust might not look like the best thrust Target when compared to other options but it is surprisingly optimal times if you're going to search for a branded spell like branded in white or branded fusion and you haven't yet been through your normal summon then searching foolish just to get those spells by using aliba which puts 1,800 extra damage on the board is usually the optimal way to do it I don't think you would have a cut foolish like I said the cut is just a m copy of Alber which is one of the best draws in the deck you're more likely to play more foolish if it ever comes back off the list then less next is gold sarcophagus this card is also super simple it's basically the same as poish burial its function is to be another two copies of alab since traged trick is not vanished as well as when sent to the graveyard gold sovus is able to just search for ala the card is slightly worse in some ways than foolish burial putting tragedy into the banish zone is not as good as putting it into the graveyard as you don't have access to its followup for the next turn also the amount of other uses is limited compared to foolish however unlike foolish burial geophagus has another main target which is mcua mcua trick is to search when vanished so you will often use goldof to trick a mcua to get a search instead of tragedy it's still slightly more common to go for tragedy into Alber but going from Merc is still very very common if you already have aliba then going from a Coura to search for something like cesia or sh dragon is pretty good another advantage of gold sock is that technically the car that you banish will eventually return to your hand in two turns this isn't something that matters most of the time but whenever it does come up you will usually appreciate the free extra resource if you banish tragedy you now get the option of using its reset effect and if you banish mcua you now have a free negate one very cute way of using gold sock is to banish a card like super Polly or evenly matched as a way of slowly outing something that you would otherwise have no out to this very rarely comes up but in theory you could use the card like this especially when side deck during B maybe you banish an out to Noir against pearly like Herold of the Abyss or exed om Co or maybe you banish K Cannon as an out to Towers monsters like the big raid Raptors or the arrival cyers Vanishing evenly mashed against stun deck so that you can out the whole board eventually is a very real thing and it's something I've done quite a lot during the doas cups something to remember about gold sock is that if you banish mcua and you only play one then you don't have it available in the deck to search for all with branded lost or to send to the graveyard with branded Fusion to summon Ren you can technically Shuffle back a banish career using Li Bellion so it's not like your mark is necessarily Gone Forever also you can add it back with branded sword which is sometimes an easier way of getting to the mcua than searching for it with lers overall GAC is just another great starter like foolish burial so you will probably always play two and if it ever comes back to free then you'll likely play all three as well so next is keeper of dragon magic this is another starter card and it's another one card combo just like Aliva it's very similar to aliver as it's functioning just the same card except keeper has a few downsides there are differences between this and Aliva but their primary uses are the same you normal summon them and in search for Branded Fusion in order to start your combo one of the reasons why keeper is worse than alibot is that it requires the discard as cost also it can't sech for any branded spell trap the way that Aliva can instead its only Targets in most branded lists will be branded fusion and also Fusion deployment as you see later in the combo section keeper is sometimes interchangeable with Aliva and sometimes its differences actually matter if you have a hard draw branded fusion and keeper then the keeper can only be used to get Fusion deployment whereas alibo would have been able to get a lot more options like branded lost or branded in high spts one other difference is that people locked you into fusion mosters and this lock is the same as the one on branded Fusion so even if the effect is negated by something like imperm you're still locked out of summ 30 this is a big deal sometimes as one of the best ways to extend through iner and alab is to use lellan to search for aysal and then special summon abysal to then make Verte but if you keep it gets imped you can't do this play since you're still locked into only summoning fusion monsters from the extra Deck it also sucks to get negated on keeper after you discard something with no value into the graveyard as it pretty much means you just lost two cards to one hander keeper is overall a worst version of aler in practice and the reason it's fite at all is usually because you need a certain amount of extra stter cards to keep bigger decks consistent add you're already maxing out on all of the copies of ala that you can that being said there are some ways in which keeper can be better than ala the most obvious way is that can search for Fusion deployment something that Alaba can't do deployment is a good card so it's not unrealistic to be in a situation where you already have branded fusion and deployment is actually a better card to search than any branded spell trat keep it also discard a cut as cost which is often a downside but it can also be an upside since you can discard cars that have value in the graveyard I gr alaz or branded sword keeper also has a second effect and is this second effect that it often leads to extra strong combos that aler is incapable of doing this effect reveals a monster in extra deck and then revise one of the monsters listed on it as material from your graveyard in face down defense position this effect sounds pretty useless at first since the monster goes face down however remember that face down monsters could still be used as fusion material so something like branded in white or cesia can still fuse with a face down alz one way to use this effect keeper is before using branded and white branded and white often gets used to banish albow and other fusion material from the graveyard but if you instead put the albas back onto your field first then the Branded in white will only banish the other material from the graveyard and the albas will be sent back to the graveyard which leaves it in the graveyard for the opponent's tone keep a second effect also allows you to go for some lines where you summon a ren from we branded Fusion because you have an extra material of albas back onto the field which you can then use for C I to get the Mir now overall even though keeper has a few advantages it's not enough to make the card better than Alaba and you never going to build your de differently because of these advantages however there is one more advantage to keeper and is this one that I think has the high chance of actually affecting potential tech building and that is the fact that keeper is a dragon ler which means it is a good pair for heist Birds keeping the number of dragons high enough for Hep to be consistently good is important so I could see a world where some 40 card lists actually choose to play keeper over some number of copies of aliber just so that they have branded High Spirits targets the last thing that's worth mentioning about keeper is that it's a target from Magnum up to search this means that if you draw Magnum mod going second and you have no way to play in your hand at all you can choose to search for keeper which is a one card starter this is a good reason to play at least one keeper however magnut itself is also a one of so this isn't something that's going to come up very often currently we see that 60 cup branded decks generally like to play some number of Keepers just to keep the consistently high enough there are lists that sometimes play one two and even sometimes three and there's also 60 card list that play Zero copies occasionally as well personally I think the keeper is needed at one or two as you don't want that many normal summons but you also want to keep the consistency high enough here is a list that I played that recently made it to 1,800 racing on the rank although this was before some of the recent changes to Brand's consistency so next is the golden sword s this is an interesting option you can play in branded that not a lot of branded players choose to play it's pretty much just used as another light monster that you can send to the graveyard with branded Fusion as well as another good Mill for grass the card's main effect is its second effect to special summon a light spellcaster whose's attack equals its own defense but your hand a graveyard cesia and quen are the cars that you intend to summon with this both of which are pretty good extenders on your own turn as well as extra disruption on the opponent's turn cesia especially is a card that you can sometimes struggle to summon on the opponent's turn so the Goen Soul itself can help with that even if you are able to summon cesia on the opponent's turn with quem it's still helpful to have the golden sword so to summon it instead so that your quem revive can be used on something else like mered golden Soul triggers and have any monster is banished face up so it is really easy to trigger you can trigger it yourself with cs like mirade Ren banishment branded in bread albon or grono and your opponent can also trigger it themselves with cards like cold by the grave bestes and SB little Knight not to mention there are Decks that like to banish cards in engine like ritual Beast brunic voiceless voice and Rescuers one thing that the golden soult so can do pretty well is alleviate the impact of Milling your one copy of quma cesia with grass as it can revive them from the graveyard pretty much whenever you want if you also melt the golden Salo with the in Grass then you get this completely for free another use for the golden salt soul is actually as a hand trap its first effect can negate an attack and then it also blocks another attack with its body on the board this can actually be pretty game-winning when your opponent is trying to otk you under maxi eventually you will draw the golden sword so which can stop two attacks its first fight can then potentially trigger after letting you block a third third attack as well the card also destroys the first attacking monster if you control alas Fusion which means you're potentially not just surviving the turn but also reducing your opponent's endboard even outside of the context of Max C you can sometimes search for this with branded lost or the such effect of mcua after you banish the one big downside to the golden sword soulle is that it's not a starter or really even an extender it can't trigger its second effect while in the hand so you need to find a way of putting this into the graveyard or onto the field in order to make use of its extension it's also not really that effective of a push during your turn one as it's not that likely that you're going to have access to a light spellcaster but you didn't already use the effect Zone can be a brick and it's not necessary to win games in branded so that's all you really need to consider not playing this card however it does make your grass and Maxi stronger so I can see the appeal of a card like this overall I personally don't like playing it as branded is powerful enough and I want to lower my chances of bricking as much as possible so next is branded sword this Cut's main use is its second effect in the graveyard to add back monsters that mention albas from your banish though to your hand the most notable card you can add like this is mcua which is good to have in your hand because it's a most in the gate mcua also often gets banished by things that go to cus aysal or Alon and if your list is only playing one mcua then bred sword could be a nice nice way to get it back there are also some extra combos that you can't do without branded sword and they very often involve adding back a card from banished like mcua although sometimes it is also cesia the end board you can make with these branded sword combos tend to be extra powerful as they're getting that extra must in the gate or that extra extension however I think where the card really shines is an improvised combos rather than predetermined lines combos that involve a lot of extra combo pieces Maybe harass maybe some interaction from your opponent and compos for breaking a board going second all tend to benefit from the versatility and power that branded sword offers the card is powerful because it can often allow you to make use of both effects of mura in the same turn and the card is also versatile because it's very easily accessible through shroud of dragon and sarin two CS that can just as easily send retribution if the Branded sword isn't needed sword can also be used as a way of just adding back cards in your hand to generate enough discard f for your discard effects you can add back albas with sword which helps you win grind games as you can add back an albas even if all three copies are banished overall this card is pretty good to play and I recommend playing this I think it's worth the acts to break so next is Brad is blazing branded King this is an interesting option that you can play in branded it's used as an alternative Target for albon to set during the end phase instead of branded in red or vanishment the reason you might want to set branded King instead of one of those other cards is that branded King has a unique effect that no what the Branded card has when you first read the card it sounds a little bit complicated and you might compare this to a board breaker like dark romal or draft plets in reality though this card is more often used as a way of negating just a single card which means it's more comparable to an un negate card like solemn judgment or Vera there's no other way to get an OM negate in branded at least not until light and darkness dragon is released so branded King is the only option for having a safety net against board breakers like rui Talons or dark rer you can also use an omun negate pretty effectively against your poma's engine cuts and in a way that you can't really do with other branded cuts for example you can negate original simple spoils sangin summoning or Fire King Island so this card gets used very similarly to an alate however it's not actually a real alate since it does have a few limitations firstly it can only negate cards on the field so you can't use it to negate something like Elder de entis which activates in the graveyard or bis heel which activates in the hand branded King also doesn't destroy the cut in NE Gates making it a lot weaker of a description than other armun negates like Baron skull guardian or ulti gu pello you also need to control an albas Fusion for it to resolve so it can't be used if you don't at least have your marriage Aid on the field branded King chooses your alas Fusion at resolution which means if your opponent removes all of your alas fusions in response to the Branded King then the Branded King w't resolve and then the biggest downside to branded king and the poth that makes it worse than a regular only negate the most is that it also negates your own field of as well when you use branded King it negates all other cards on the field besides the one alvas Fusion that you choose this is kind of bad for you A lot of the time since there's a lot of cards on your field that you'd rather not have negated like CIA quem and branded lost you can also sometimes have other fusion monsters like Furious dragon and Draco stellia if you have branded king and a bunch of those other cards you will probably want to make sure you use all of the other cards first before using the Branded King in order to make sure that you get the full value of your endboard the problem with this is that it takes away the freedom to use your only negate on whatever you want as you're going to end up negating your own stuff if you use it too early if you're forced to use it right away to stop something like reri then most of your end board is just immediately turned off you could also never use branded King to help resolve cards like managment or branded in red or quem since the Branded King will also just negate those cards as well so something that might happen a lot for example is you try to activate brand in red and your opponent chains cold by the gra branded in red will be negated by branded King so there's no point chaining it these limitations make the card a lot less crazy than it seems at first and then when you compare it directly to banishment and branded in red it's clear that it's actually a lot weaker one of the most important parts about banishment and brands in red is that they Fusion summon which triggers Qui and branded lost and it lets you create branded loss Windows as well Red King does none of these things which means his power ceiling is HD a lot lower than the Alternatives it is still worth keeping in mind that branded King can negate multiple cards even though it's more often used to negate a single important card you can sometimes get value out of using it against multiple cards for example against runic decks you can use it to negate a runic spell and then also negate the fountain so that they can't draw if it's runic stun brand of King is actually a very important card for letting un neate multiple floodgates at the same time against Fire King cards negating Island will also negate their Sanctuary which means the island is now vulnerable to destruction from godian Chimera or Furious dragon and against ubel negating a bunch of ubel monsters as well as nightmare pain and and the opening of the spirit Gates all at once will allow you to attack into their board normally rather than having to crash into the Ells it's also pretty nice in the mirror match as you can hold the Cod for the opponent's branded fusion and it will also then negate their branded loss another advantage to branded King over the Alternatives is that it plays better into Maxi banishment and branded in red both special summon and usually more than once which means a second copy of Maxi from your opponent or a top deck maxi will actually punish these cards quite a bit braded King also has a graveyard effect which is exactly the same as the one unbranded in he Birds if a Fusion Monster was set to the graveyard that time you can add it back to your hand during the end phase the catch just like Brandon in High Spirits is that you could only use one effect per turn not both so if you use this on your opponent's turn you're not going to get it back immediately during the end phase instead you'll have to wait until the end of your own next turn just to get it back to the hand and then you need to wait an entire turn cycle again before you can set it this sounds bad but it's really the same as Brandon and height Spirits you don't actually plan on resolving these cards multiple times and instead you just use the adack effects later on as discard photo using branded King as discard photo is a real use for the card combined with High Spirits and cesia you now have potentially three free discards to add back to your Hound during the end phase which should be all the discard you ever need for the opponent's turn this could actually come up when you resolve grass as it's not uncommon to maill all three another thing about branded King is that it is a target for thrust going first if you already have Fusion duplication then branded King can be a good secondary option it's also worth noting that branded King actually works as a first tet under Dimension shifted whereas Fusion duplication does not and then the last consideration for this Cod is that it is kind of a brick especially going second so as always there is a good argument to just leave it out of the deck altogether since it's not absolutely essential for your game point it's not essential because it is just an alternative Target for album with the main target still being branded in red or branded banishment there are a lot of lists that replace banishment for Branded King like this one from the top 100 of a recent dos cup and this one from subok at the latest World Championships in fact cutting banishment is pretty common among the best branded players in general although I personally still think the cut is worth playing what you'll see in these lists though is that they all still do include branded and R the main target to set with albon is still branded in red rather than branded king and the Branded King is just used as a situational option something else is worth pointing out about branded King is that while it can be used against evenly matched branded in red can also be evenly matched the way branded and bread beats evenly matched is by using it to summon sanctifier during the battle phase you can then use sanctifier to put a monster on your opponent's field in defense position to prevent evenly matched at the end of the pedal phase while this does force you to use the Brandon red and the sanctifier effect it's still better than negating your whole board immediately with Brandon King so overall I'd see the Branded King is a good option that you can play in bigger branded decks 60 card lists and 50 C lists often play it but it should never be as a replacement for Branded and red I personally really like branded King and I often like including all three targets for alot in my decks I think the bread of King is really solid and reliable and it's kind of underere explored by the majority of branded players I recommend playing this card in your list and if you're worried about breaking too much you can always just cut it or alternatively cut banishment instead that being said once slen not his Dragon releases in master all banishment becomes much more valuable so you're probably not going to play branded King and would prefer to focus on brand ADV banishment instead also if you are going to play this card you're only ever going to play one copy as it is a brick even going fast so it's better to just search it rather draw it next is AER of Darkness this cot is playable because Brandon does play dark bosters at overall 8 has three uses and branded the first use is as extra consistency iow Aller to draw two cards so it does help you see more of your starters and the Second Use is to help you find your board breakers like evenly super poly and droplets when you go second and then the third use for a l is as a way of going plus by banishing tragedy or mcua tragedy and mcua both trigger when banished so you're learn now that she bull cards rather than just cycling through different ones this is a really strong play Within happens especially since banishing tragedy let you search for your main combo starter like Alaba banishing mcua also is really good because no matter what since you have more than one option for what to search for with mcua it's likely going to be a good play when you think of a l like this it's easy to think that it's actually a really good card imprinted and should be played as a staple since it's just extra consistency with a chance of being a really powerful play however in reality I think Al is actually an extremely suspicious card to include in a branded deck the reason is because there's a high chance that activating alur is going to be completely neutral or even detrimental to you and only a small chance of it being actually beneficial due to the relatively low monster counting branded decks at a very low number of good banishes L mcua and tragedy if you look at a standard branded deck which looks something like this you can see that there are around 15 dark monsters in the main deck along with around five to six cards that immediately search for a dark moner so a total of around 20 cards overall that pair with a of Darkness if you draw a l in your opening hand the chances of seeing at least one dark monster in your remaining four cards is about 80% that sounds like a lot but it does mean that about one in five of your games where you draw a l you won't actually have a dark must at all to banish for it in the hands where you do draw AOW the chance that you draw either mcua or tragedy specifically is only about 133% which means out of the Gams where you draw AER only about one in eight of them will actually have a really good Target to banish and then the overall chance of drawing AER plus tragedy or Mia at all is only 3% which is about 1 in 33 games so building your whole deck around this is definitely not a good idea you can try to improve these Arts by playing multiple copies of tragedy and the Coura however even if you play free copies of both your chance of opening one of them plus the erer is still only about 10% and out of the gains where you do draw the aler only about one in three of them will have tragedy or mcua in your opening hand as well putting extra copies of mcua and tragedy is also making your deck a lot Bricker since on their own tragedy and mcua above just breaks you also have to think about the deck space that those cards take up even six card decks are pretty tight and usually include only one copy of each and maybe sometimes two mcua which means you would have to be cutting a lot of important stuff to make room for those extra copies another thing to think about is that in this standard list the chance that you draw exactly one dark monster to banish with a low is about 40% this is important because the hands where you have only one dark monster to banish or the hands where you have no choice about how to use your aler and if that card is ala or keeper then you're most likely going to want to use that card for its own use as a starter rather than banish it with AER making the alur in you had actually completely useless so overall the chance of having a bad alert or a mediocre aler is pretty high while the chance of having a really good alert is actually very low now these numbers are not perfect since they don't take into account the extra card for going second and the also don't take into account the fact that you do draw two cards from Aur before you choose what to banish also something else you can do with a lure is hold the card until later in the turn and then at some point in your combo you can search for a career to then banish with a lure and you could do this with branded last or branded in High Spirits branded in High Spirits specifically is important because this is something you can actually do at the very start of your turn you can search from a courier and then go for a low r away before committing to most of your starters all of these things make the chance of a l being bad lower but they don't eliminate the chance enough for me to consider it a good card another thing you can do with the LI if you don't draw a good Target to banish for it is to just discard it for one of your discard fits the argument here is that allur is good because if you need it you can activate it and if you don't need it or you don't have a good card to banish then you could discard it for one of your many disc card effects a counterargument to this is that it is still better to have a useful card in your hand rather than a card that's bad even if you're disc carding as it would provide more options and how you play your Handover role and it also means that if you draw a better disc card like retribution or branded sold then you're likely going to discard that anyway and still be stuck with the batt of darkness in your hand another thing to consider when you're playing a l is what you're going to be drawing with it if your deck has a bunch pan traps in it then allur is going to be drawing into those pretty often which makes it a lot worse of a card going second in this situation it's a lot better to be playing board Breakers as the Allure is going to let you draw into them however when you go first Allure drawing into board Breakers is pretty bad and you'd then rather be playing hand traps to draw instead so in the end if you're main decking the low you're kind of just gambling no matter what a low of dness theoretically adds consistency to your deck but in practice practice I think it ends up just being too awkward most of the time for the reasons that I just mentioned branded is also not desperate for the extra consistency anyway if Brandon needed more consistency you could easily play more starters like maybe a servant three copies of keeper and even multiple copies of Kit if you're that desperate you could also just play less cards in your deck to increase consistency as well in my opinion there's actually only three situations where alert of darkness is a good card at all the first situation is in a deck with so many interchangeable dark monsters that you're always going to have multiple monsters to Bish for a and you're never going to need to banish the best card in your hand an example of a deck like this would be danger darkwell this deck is almost entirely dark monsters and pretty much every danger monster is the same so drawing a bunch of them and banishing one for a low is just going to be cycling through your deck with no awkward downsides the second situation is in a deck that has a lot of monsters in his deck that trigger when banished like thunder dragon or Kale's decks does Lea a combo really well in these decks with being banished by alur in the same way that tragedy and mcua do since the chance of seeing the combo in these decks is a lot higher alur is more of a power card rather than consistency and then the last situation in which I think a is a good card is index that are relying on very specific board Breakers to win the game going second this is the one situation that granted can sometimes find itself in as in some formats You could argue that the best way to go second is with bullet Breakers and that there is really only one or two specific ones that actually get the job done for example suppose that rescue Ace is the best dech evenly matched and lightning storm are really the only board Breakers that do the job here so playing a l Of Darkness to draw into those cuts specifically is a good idea if there's a lot of different board Breakers that would work similarly though like droplets Talons evenly and super poly for example let's say they all do a good job against a certain deck then it's still mathematically better to just play more of the board Breakers than any copies of a lure if you do choose to play a lure in a build like this though the card is still awkward as when you go first you're still going to have the same bad math on drawing good targets and having to deal with drawing board break is when you go first so overall I think a l ofis is just not that good and branded I don't recommend playing this God at all but if you would to play it I'd be very skeptical about playing a lot of it that being said I know that my opinion on allore of DS isn't shared by every good branded player so here are the opinions of a couple other branded players that may be better than myself abam mode said that it's good just not in hand trap decks and ttk also said that it's good but it would be the first card they replace so moving on to Fright foot Patchwork as well as Asim chain and polymerization these three cards make up the patchwork engine so I might as well talk about them all as one the idea behind these cards is that they help generate card advantage in hand which you can then use for this card futter and the polymerization can be used as an extender especially going second where it has the ability to cement Guardian Chimera Ed imp chain triggers when send from the hand to the graveyard to search for patchwork which means your plan is to dis scard the edge of if you draw it for one of your discard effects like opening all the Bellion the patchwork and then search for polymerization and another copy of edum chain effectively turning your minus one into a plus one instead if you draw Patchwork instead of the edum then you can use it right away to search for polymerization and the edge and chain then you can use that Ed and chain for a discard effect which will then trigger to search for another copy of Patchwork even though the patchwork is a hard one turn having that extra patch sh in the hand for either followup next turn or just as discard fter again is still pretty good either way you get to access the polymerization and the free discard fighter no matter which card you draw the additional edent chain can also be used with polymerization as fusion material it is a dark monster which means it can be used as material for masquerade drag stellia or even sometimes Rebellion where you're going first these are the most likely monsters that you're going to summon with poly in order to summon alz Visions you will need to hard drawer an alz or at least search for it which is why you often end up making Jaggers to Pia or masquerade instead you can make Masquerade with leftover desp monsters like an Al on your field an extra Al in your hand or even a hard joint tragedy when you go second by far the best Monster to summon with the polymerization is Guardian Chimera the additional eding chain you get from the patrck engine can act as a free monster in the hand for Chimera which makes it easier to and the polymerization in the graveyard actually acts as a buffal guardian Chimera as the guardian Chimera will then become untargetable if you draw the polymerization directly instead of the patchwork or the edum chain you won't get the free Cod advantage or discard fter but you can at least still use the poly as an extender or as a discard itself since AUM chain and Patchwork of better drawers and the polymerization you normally see the package being played with a 322 ratio edge of chain is the best roll so it's played at three and Patchwork is pretty much just as good so it's also played at either three or sometimes two the polymerization is the worst roll however it's still normally played at two rather than one simply because Patrick needs to be able to add polymerization from the deck in order to resolve so you don't want the engine to become dead just because you drew the one copy of poly poly is also not the worst draw in the world as like I said it can still be used as an extender and since it's not once per turn you can theoretically use both poly if you draw one alongside Patchwork or eding chain the biggest advantage to the patchwork engine is how good it is at making guardi and clera going second against slower and lower power decks like Labyrinth runic sword Soul Centon or voiceless voice playing into their end board with powerful engine like Guardian Chimera is often better than trying to beat it with non-engine cars like hand traps or board Breakers that being said against combo Decks that make really strong boards turn one like Yubel snake ey Dragon link anything with wakashi or anything with fiend smidth you'd prefer to have a hand trap or bolt breaker over an edging chain as the extra PCH that the edging chain provides is not likely going to be enough to break that board I think this is the main reason that the patrck engine isn't really played anymore it's become hard to break the End bullets of the metex with just short engine and so it's usually better to play 7 R8 non engine cards rather than the 7 R8 card Patchwork engine the patchwork engine was also played a lot before branded good quem cesia and lellan which means it made a lot of sense to add extra engine to the D back Ben so that it wasn't so one-dimensional another reason that the Patrick engine has fallen out of favor is that one of the best monsters summon with the polymerization going first was masquerade the Blazing Dragon since masquerade no longer fits in most branded deck's extra deck it means that you you be struggling to find a good use for the poly going first even dros to pello which is one of the other good targets for po going first is not always included in every branded deck now either I personally think drag stellia is pretty good still but not everyone agrees with that and I also sometimes don't have room for it in my lists the number of desp monsters in the deck is also decreased due to hits on the band list as well as certain cars like ad litim and drama turge being cut from the deck completely this makes it less likely that you will be able to make Masquerade with your piz even if you were playing it the ends branded can make turn one without the Patrick engine are strong enough already and for going second you'd rather be playing as many hand JPS or board Breakers as you can instead of extra engine in an environment like challenge of Cups where you can play whatever card you want whenever you want without having to submit a deck list playing a patchwor engine alongside a couple of masquerades could actually be a very good strategy against decks like Labyrinth paleo or runic in the TCG the petrock engine is still played a little bit but in mastle I personally don't see it coming back anytime soon one small thing to note about edim chain is that it triggers when send from the field to the graveyard as well which means if you brick you can actually set the eding chain and it will replace itself when your opponent removes it another small thing to note is that Ed and chain is a fiend which means it can't can be used as a High Spirits Target if you're playing citis or masquerade in your extra deck and if you do disc card it for the High Spirits it will then trigger to search for patchwork so overall the patchwork engine isn't really worth playing anymore unless the formite become slow enough that breaking boards with engine becomes more realistic okay so now let's talk about that grass looks Arina this is a really powerful card in branded just as it is in any deck it's really the main reason to play the 60 card version of branded at all although I will say that it is not the only reason this card pretty much just Mills 20 cards which is a pretty good effect but if your opponent is playing more than 40 then it will M slightly less and if you're going second then there's actually a very good chance that it's going to BU more than 20 cards sometimes even a lot more depending on how much of the deck the opponent has gone through on their turn one bred has a fair graveyard synergies which is why grass is good to play in the deck the main cards you're trying to Mill are retribution s or shroud Dragon tragedy branded sword as well as branded fusion and branded in white the reason why you want to Mill your Fusion spells is so that you can add them back to your hand with retribution meling sne or shrouded is really good for this as they can both send either retribution or the fusion spell depending on which part of the peir you maybe didn't Mill Milling tragedy is good as it will be able to just search for aler when you Mill it making it basically the same as polish burial except you also get to Mill a bunch of extra bonus cards as well tragedy can also be used for its reset effect which means you have two possible ways of reusing the spells that you Mill branded sold is also another good meal because it just getes you a free card to add to your hand once you startop Vanishing Cuts if you also M mcua then you can easily banish it from your graveyard with albian or branch did white and then add it back to your hand with sword as well as getting the mcua search effect this makes mcua a pretty good Mill sometimes too in general albas is also a good meal as like I've said before having albas in the graveyard for the opponent's turn is always better than not having it since you can revive it as a quick effect and then fuse with one of their monsters it's not normally that difficult to get albas into the graveyard yourself but Milling an extra one for free with grass is help ful as it means you don't need to go out of your way to make sure that a copy of albas gets into your graveyard during your condo basic lines using albon and the belly and usually remove your first albas from the graveyard so having a second one M for free can sometimes make a big difference one concern you have with grass is the possibility of Milling all three Elbas if you do this then you won't be able to activate branded Fusion as there's no albis left in your deck to use as material the solution to this is to go for Branded in white instead of branded fusion and then banish albas from your graveyard to make your Blaze sometimes if you mail the right moners this can be no different from actually activating branded Fusion anyway as if you make albon you can then use its effect to banish another copy of albz and that even tribute the albon for a l Bellion that you also meld with that grass zoning the belly in the Searing Dragon will also allow you to recycle copies of albz back into your deck which means you can then activate branded Fusion afterwards because they're branded in white building too many copies of el Bears isn't really that big of a concern with grass instead a much biger concern for me is Milligan important wov like branded in red branded lost and branded banishment these cards can be recurred with attribution or tragedy but if you need to use those cards on your Fusion spells instead then you're going to have to make deal with the fight with your albon might not be able to set your ideal Target in the end phase and your Rebellion might not be able to get your branded loss one way to help deal with this problem is to playing multiple targets for Le Bellion like be still regained or even multiple copies of lost and it also helps to have multiple good targets for albon so that you're not as likely to Mill them all grass for example you could play branded in bread brand management and branded King it can also be frustrating to Mill your only copy of Glen if you're playing just one as you're not then able to summon it from the deck with Titanic L instead you'll likely have to access the Quan by Reviving it with banishment or sanctify another good thing about grass is that it usually ensures that you get enough free discard fighter in the end phase between one to two copies of cesia free copies of High Spirits and maybe a branded King there's a lot of curs that you can Mill with grass that will just add themselves back to your hand during the end phase which means you unlikely to ever run out of discards Milling m mple copies of high spes is also not unlikely which means over multiple end phases i w to be accumulating a lot of free card Advantage so because of all of these good Mills grass is very often a one card combo for Branded which means you could be rically counted as one of your stter cuts it is possible that your grass does nothing or very little and not enough to start your Blaze but the chances of that are relatively low one tip for using grass is to use your Fusion deployment first getting the maximum Mills from your grass is not really that much of a consideration it's definitely more important to get important one ofs added your deck first like cesia another tip is with tragedy make sure that you think twice before clicking the tragedy trigger when you Mill it since there is a very good chance that you'd rather use the tragedy for its reset effect instead especially if you already have a normal summon in your hand so grass is pretty good from just the mandatory cause that you play in branded but you can also make it stronger with some additional options in your deck as well one option you can play is a Floodgate monster just like gming puppet Nightmare before it got banned you can also use other flate monsters in combination with sanctifier to lock out your opponent from playing a Milling knes of grass is very helpful since it means you no longer need to worry about getting your Floodgate M into the graveyard and you only need to worry about summoning Sanctified the best look at most of to play that are currently still legal uh arw IA DDD reum and DD a force Milling any of these with grass is pretty good as you can then just summon sanctifier and lock out your opponent another optional Mill you can play to make your grass stronger is fairy tale snow this card was played by TI ass at Worlds and His function is to be a good C to Mill with grass and has a lot of free activations right away it's also a light spellcaster which means it can be used as the material for sanctifier and albian other than that snow is pretty self-explanatory It's A disruption by itself from the graveyard and it can be used as a blocker to help protect yourself from being outk one cool thing you can do with snow is banish mcua from your hand or graveyard so it can technically help you combo in certain situations snow also goes pretty well with the golden sword sole as you can use the snow to trigger the sword soulle at any time Ming both of these together with grass alongside a light spellcast to Lake quesia is a potential lucky holl that you can go for with your grass that gives you an extra push or disruption for free and I believe that this is what ter was actually going for with his world's deck another optional meal is chaos net this this card adds free extra deception removal battle damage and survivability or by itself it triggers to summon itself whenever a card on the field is destroyed by a card Effect that can be an aure card or your opponent's card and it can be either you destroying it or your opponent so there's a lot of ways that this crowd can end up being triggered easiest way to trigger this yourself is with furious Dragon but you can also technically trigger it with godian Chimera and branded beast in order for this to work you do need to have a light monster and a dark monster in the graveyard which isn't super difficult however without Gras smelling about your bonus cards it can sometimes be difficult to get a light and a dark into your graveyard that you are willing to banish for netl this the payoff though is running high as you get to banish any cot in your opponent's field and take away followup out of the graveyard so it's really powerful when it resolves all of these optional Mills that you can play make your grass stronger and they all have the same downside which is a beond very good to draw so adding these to your deck is really just a way of gambling with a prier deck in exchange for more power I think that playing one or two of these extra bricks is fine but any more than that is pushing it a little bit too far and I also think the Branded is completely fine on its own without without playing any specific Mills for grass K's Memphis is probably the better one right now as it has a good Fire King matchup and it's also accessible with granino and fusion duplication so while grass is really strong and branded it's not actually the ultra wind cut that it would be in of the decks Tia for example or infernoid or in super heavy Samurai Adventure synchron kind of just automatically win the game when they off grb due to the sheen number of graveyard effects that it Mills Brandon doesn't really do that though instead grass is usually just there to trigger one or two fixs and it kind of just helps you play in all the same ways that you normally do and with maybe a little bit more power in that free so it's actually more of a starter than an aluto when cut it's very possible that you activate grass and the only relevant Mills you get are retribution and a fusion spell making the grass not really much better than just drawing branded Fusion directly when you go first you only have one copy of grass so it's not often that you will draw it anyway however when you go second you can also search for grass with thrust which means you have access to it a lot more often it's kind of like having four copies of grass just for going second G has other good targets going second as well but grass is one of the best and in general it's probably the strongest option even over a branded Fusion as grass is likely to get access to branded Fusion any anyway and then have other good bonus Ms on top of that overall grass is really strong and you're definitely going to play it in the 60 card version of branded you can even play grass in a slightly smaller branded deck too like a 50 card deck with the idea being that it's an option you can search for going second when your opponent has been through a lot of their deck during turn one if grass ever comes back to two or three then it's possible that you can experiment with all three copies in branded and if it ever gets better and it's still going to be just a small hit as the deck is completely fine without brass next is drama turge of desia this is going to be the first of a lot of these main deck cards that we have left that are all kind of similar they're similar in the sense that they're not really quite good enough to make it into the Branded deck although some of them do see the occasional bit of play dram fits into this category quite nicely this Con was better in past versions of branded back when there was more desia names in the deck and it relied on using Brandon and red to summon G and Chimera as one of its main power plays the reason this was good for drama surge was because Brandon red could be used to banish drama from the hand as one of the materials for Chimera which would then allow a dispat to summon itself while on the board drama surge acts as an additional disruption that can negate your opponent's extra deck Monsters the idea is that when your opponent special summons a monster from the extra deck where an activated on summon trigger its effect would be chain link one and the dram would then activate it chain link two to negate it this does only work on the opponent's turn as if it was your turn then the dram would actually be jailing one instead but most of the time you were only activating BRS and red on the opponent's T anyway drama could also be used as the target for Branded and red so you could easily disc cut a full Bellion or opening and still get good value from it later on was also in searchable with tragedy and it could even be speci a summon from the deck with opening both of these effects used to be more relevant in these past versions of branded back when there was more copies of opening an Al over roll meaning that tragedy was more often able to search for extenders like drage or ad Litin instead of needing to get your do card every time aloa since the number of alibas and openings in your deck has gone down due to repeated hits on the band list the chance of having a tragedy search available to use on something like drama surge is much lower and this makes the card much less likely to come up when you don't draw it directly also the less focused on godi and Chimera that branded has now means that it's possible you won't get a good chance to summon drama surge even if you do draw it another good use for drama surge in the past was in combination with the patchwork engine using polymerization on turn one to summon masquerade or Draco stellia was extra powerful when one of your Fusion materials was a drw mge from the hand since you were able to just spash a summon it back right away and have one extra disruption on your end port since the patchwork engine is no longer played in most branded decks Dr also gets weaker in those decks and overall drama offering potential extra disruption in the end board is not something that branded really needs branded is already really good at making a strong board going first and it doesn't need extra engine to help make it stronger especially when that engine comes in the form of a break that being said cars like cesia and granel actually synergize pretty well drama making it not completely unreasonable to consider finding a new place for it in the deck cesia cfes away drage from the hand at any time which will allow it to special summon itself and gradol cons send it from the deck to the GRE good as it is a level eight dark monster where it can then be used as the target for Branded at Red branded also still summons gy and Chimera a lot of the time meaning that you can still get the full value of drama turge just like before in a creative build of branded that focuses more on summoning masquerades turn one I could see a place for drama surge however in standard branded the card just doesn't really offer what branded needs anymore and it's not really any stronger than other options especially when it comes to Grand grenal which has a lot better Tes to send I wouldn't be playing this in branded and I'm pretty sure that won't change change anytime soon and the next is AD litim of desia this card is pretty close to being the exact same story as drama and when it comes to past branded lists ad Litin was usually the card that Soul play over drama as it pretty much did the same thing but slightly better when used as material from the hand of field adlet can special summon any despa monster or level eight Ohio Fusion Monster from your graveyard banished the idea with this card is that you can banish it for Branded and red alongside a miror Jade from your field to summon K and the adli would then trigger to summon back the mirade to your field that mirade would now be able to use its effect again and mir's effect is a soft on by turn adli is a desperia monster which means it can be The Branding red tet and it can be searched for with tragedy and opening again this is very similar to drama Toge with the difference being that abp's effect is usually stronger since an extra Banished with mirade is a stronger disruption than drama is targeted negate this is why Adler gener saw play in older versions of branded whereas drama was only an option that was sometimes included the one situation where adab was worse than dramaturge was when triggering it on turn one with polymerization generally you didn't have good tets to summon for ad a out of the time on turn one so it would just be used to summon out random copies of tragedy or Alaba which are just useless bodies whereas drama surge would be of the summon itself though in today's buil of branded Abid doesn't see play anymore for the same reasons that drage doesn't branded doesn't need the highest ceiling so there's no reason to include the braks in the deck the Patrick engine is also no longer played and the amount of times you will have a spare tragedy C to use on ADL is less now than before due to the lower total number of desia cards in the deck andlet could possibly see play again in a future build of Branda that is focused heavily on engine like I mentioned before about the patchwork engine if there's ever a FMA where going second without non-engine is realistic then a heavy engine builder branded that includes things like the patch Rock engine extra pistal and masquerade could also play at lion if you know for a fact you're playing it as the deck like voiceless Voice or Labyrinth a build like this would actually be pretty good even now as you can overwhelm them with your engine when it comes to standard branded though it's probably better not to include this card then we have despian comedy this card like the other despian monsters I just talked about is less of a currently playable card and more of a relic from the past this card was sometimes used as a way of dodging targeting effects like imper and Bor on your important monster effects like aliber and low Bellion the first of it could be used from your hand to protect your aliber by by negating the impel MOA and second effect could be used from the graveyard to protect your Rebellion by tributing it in response to the impera which would allow it to resolve no more you would sometimes send this from your deck to the gray G with branded Fusion as the dark monster needed for lellan this would allow you to resolve the lellan more reliably if you had the comedy in your hand all you had to do was discarded for the cost of lellan and then you'd still have the protection available another good use for this card was as a way of outing skill drain comedy can tribute any Fusion M to as a quick effect so to out skill drain what you could do is activate Guardian Chimera and then chain the comedy to Tribute the Chimera so that it's no longer on the field when it resolves this would allow the effect to not get negated by skill drain and you can then choose to destroy the skill drain you can do something similar with banishment and super poly now but admittedly comedy is still the easiest way to out skill drain like overall though just like adlib and drama the release of cesia quam and sanctifier and the bals made comedy not so useful as you're way more likely to want to summon albon with your branded Fusion in order to take advantage of how good the Bal Rebellion is so summoning the fusion rebellion and setting comedy just for some extra safety is a huge compromising Power by comparison and again the lower number of openings and alibers means that you're now way less likely to ever want to search for comedy which means it ends up being too unlikely to be worth play it is a potential useful Mill with grass and that's also true to some extent with the other despers drama sech and ADL but again in the end none of these cards offer what Brandon needs now so that just not worth playing another thing is that skill drain is now at one so there's less need for comedy but if there is ever a popular meta deck that runs skill drain comedy could be a potential option to help fight against it although I still have my doubts that it would even be worth playing then so next is branded Beast this is actually a pretty good card in general and it's not that uncommon seed in branded however it doesn't always see play in most branded decks especially at the higher levels of competition it did see a little bit of play at Wells although it was just a single branded deck that was using it this card's Main role is to be an additional Target for the best old rebellion and while it's on the field it offers you removal and extra disruption as I've said before branded has a lot of ways to remove monsters but comparatively few ways to deal with spells and traps so that's exactly what branded Beast is good for you can use branded Beast to destroy problematic flip Gates like skill drain rivalry and Grave with a super ancient organism as well as other annoying cards like sank and summoning and Nightmare paint since you will normally access Beast through the Bisal Rebellion you're always going to have at least one Bisal to Tribute vers effects and if you want to get multiple uses out of Beast all you can do is actually try to Tribute to other dragon monsters instead of the lellan so that you always keep a BAL monster on the board the more Bal moners you play in your deck better branded Beast becomes as you're going to have an easier time making it live if you draw it and you will also have more options for how to use it in general even if you access it through the best you the belly Dru wor specifically combos very well with Beast since tributing Dru wor would allow you to get its effect when sent to the graveyard as well letting your Beast effectively remove two cards with a price of one brand of regained works really well with this card as it allows you to constantly recur Bal monsters to Tribute for beast and a drawer effect will keep generating you cards to offset the card Advantage you lose by tributing moners with Beast another thing that branded Beast can do is make your one card combos with Al or keep it more reliable this is something I'll show in the combo section but a lot of the one card combos won't actually trigger branded lost on turn one and instead only trigger it on the opponent's turn to search from mcua after Fusion summoning with banishment or branded in red on the opponent's turn mcua is a disruption but since resolving banishment or branded in red is unreliable it can be safe as just get branded Beast with the Bellion instead of branded lost as it is a more guaranteed disruption the biggest downside to find at Beast is that it's one of the worst brecks you can possibly play and another big downside is that it's still almost always better to just get branded lost with Rebellion instead of anything else it's also not necessary to play Beast as the grand game it offers with branded regained is not something branded desperately needs and Outing spell and Tra cards is also possible with other cards like Furious dragon and branded King branded Beast does have a second effect in the end phase and this is actually my favorite part of the Cod its effect to place branded lost or regained from the graat onto the field for free is pretty good it's relatively easy to put branded spell traps into the graveyard so it's not unlikely that you can access branded beast and branded lost by placing the Beast with the Bellion and then somehow sending branded lost to the graveyard overall branded Beast is acceptable I don't think it's necessarily a mistake to play this carde however it's definitely not necessary for the debt to function brighted King Furious Dragon godian Chimera and even branded lost all allow you to do what you want to do with Beast without actually needing to play it which is why I ultimately don't think you should play this card that being said in versions of branded the play lot of Bisal you could easily put this in your deck and played alongside a branded regained for a really powerful Grind game and then this branded regain this is another optional Target for lellan that give you extra recyclability as well as a Grind game by providing small incremental Advantage recycling your engine is good for long grind games as you can put back copies of albas and mirade as you banish them meaning that you never actually run out and don't ever have to resort to making a specific play with lellan just to recycle some curs one of extra monsters like Grell and renb will also automatically make their way back into the extra Deck with regained as they banish themselves as part of their effect which will then trigger regain to recycle you're also getting a draw every time which allows you to slowly accumulate a lot of cod advantage over multiple tens branded vanishes light and dunk musters all the time with its engine albon branded in white bals even gold sarcophagus and tragedy can all banish monsters on your turn and then Mir banishment and branded in red can also banish mostes on the opponent's CH when you factor in the fact that the opponent can also banish light dot moners with their own cards it becomes pretty clear that regain is going to get a draw every single turn the card works best with best deals since it has the effect to revive them to the field but also because BS are the easiest way to banish specific light and dart monsters from your graveyard in order to recycle them with the draw effect r magot with regain effect also adds to your ability to recycle as well as Magnum up can add dragon moners from the graveyard not just the deck Reviving jurus worm helps defend you against attacks which plays well into the grand game of regained as it mightly you survive a time that you would have otherwise not something to keep in mind is that regain can't special summon the best steeld Bellion as the Bellion could only be special summon by its own summoning condition and then something else to note about regain is that it works pretty well with brand Beast regain provides extra Bisal Fe you to keep tributing for Beast and the card Advantage from regain helps offset the cards you lose by tributing Cosa with Beast one cute trick you can do at regain is against your opponent's SP little Knight if your opponent banishes the spu that's effect you can trigger regain to put it back into the deck and draw a card now the SP won't return in the end phase but the utmost that they banish still will this is something to consider if you have regained life and available to use its first effect while your opponent has an spb on the board you could consider not activating regain at the first opportunity in order to save it as a threat for the opponent's SP overall though regained is still worse than branded lost in most situations since branded lost offers you extra disruption as well as more immediate control over the board which is more in line with what branded is trying to do in his General game plan in general Brandon's game plan is to win the game pretty quickly if there Away really powerful turn one board backed up by a bunch of followup while it can play a long Grind game that's not what you're trying to do so playing C like regain that are specifically dead just to help with grand games aren't really going to be that impactful in most games you could play this card as an additional Target for Rebellion maybe if you're playing three copies of branded loss you can play one regain so that you'll lelly in effect isn't wasted when you draw one of the Branded losts however even in list set of point triple lost I don't think it's a good idea to include another Target personally I think regained as well as Beast are pretty format dependent both of these cards are made better when more best deals are played in the main deck and in slower formats where the best decks are more controlling than combo games are going to be more likely to go long so Bas in a regain become better I'm always open to playing these cards as I do think they're very fun and I often try them out from format to format however I do think that the most competitive version of branded would typically only play branded lost so next is branded atude this is an interesting card it's not played in regular branded because the Synchro Summon effect is pretty useless you don't play synchros in branded and even the few that you could play you don't really have room for any extra deck that being said in a build of branded that is focused specifically on synchros this card can actually be a pretty in tackled part of the deck using the level six besal and the level four tuners the brand branded has cesia and quem you can Synchro into level 10 monsters on your opponent's turn like this Pata and baron def flow and if you have the Bisal Rebellion on your field instead of a level six Bisal then you can make level 12 synchros like luto WTH and Centurion legia something else you can do is make chaos Angel when you don't even have a tuna using another level four like Al or alaz instead here's an example of how a SRO version of branded might work work and this is something we'll look at more in detail later on the flate effect of a to that banishes all of your opponents monsters that gets use as material is one of the big advantages of playing the Synchro build over regular branded and hits most meta decks pretty strongly although there are a few good Decks that play pretty well under like ritual Beast tempai Centon and stun overall I think a dude is a really good card to play in syro branded however you would never need to play it regular branded as there is just no reason to ever choose this overal branded L for the belly and effect and there's no reason to ever set this with albon over something night branded and red in fact even in a lot of synchr branded versions a two is not actually that mandatory of a card as there are lists like this for example which we'll look at later on which doesn't even include it next is branded loss this card is a removal spell that can Shuffle back one of your opponent's monsters is if it was Spates someone from the extradent it also allows you to tag out one of your Fusion molers for an alvas Fusion during the end phase the problems with this card and white never sees plain branded are that firstly it's too low impact as a search Target comp to other option that you can search for with aliber and kit like branded lost branded in bread branded in white and branded Fusion is card is just weak so you're not going to want to search this very often secondly this card can only Target Monster summon from the extra deck which means it's limited on what it can remove thirdly shuffling back your own Fusion Monster and then only replacing it in the end phase means that this card isn't helpful at creating otks and then finally having to control a Fusion Monster already means that this card only works when you're already playing it cannot be used as a starter or extender making it a brick if you try it the fact that your opponent is allowed to special someone in alas Fusion in the end phase is actually not that relevant since aside from the mirror match no deck is going to have random elbis fusions in an extra deck his card does have some C uses like shuffling back a mirror Jade and then summoning it back in the end phase in order to reset it but that's nowhere near enough to make this car playable next is decisive battle at Gonda this card often gets forgotten about since it doesn't have branded in his name but it is still part of the archetype typically this card only gets played in stun decks to protect fossil biner and barer statues however I do think it's used in other decks is kind of underrated if you were to put this in your branded deck you'd probably find it to be quite good when you draw it being able to protect any card from being destroyed by either ble or card Effect is not that bad of an effect especially when it's going to generate you advantage in the end phase as well this card protects multiple cars at the same time and it can even protect itself from the struction as well the last part of this card to special summon springen kit from your handle deck would also be pretty good and branded as well unfortunately this card is not searchable so it wouldn't be that worth it to play although I could see a world where branded can play this in the future if the for mon is right or if there's some more potential hits on a band list so next is super polymerization this is more of a non-engine card than an engine code however just like the next two cards thrust in cold by they're pretty staple and branded and they're kind of synonymous with the deck so I decided to talk about them here super pulley is a really strong card in branded it can help win games that you have absolutely no chance of winning otherwise and it can also be one of the strongest disruptions as well as tools for outplaying your opponent all due to the fact that it cannot be responded to the main targets you're normally trying to summon with this are mud dragon Gora and Miri between mud dragon and Gora you're able to fuse any two monsters your oppon of controls with the same attribute together with super pulling two monsters with the same attribute and type make Gora and two monsters with the same attribute but different types make mud dragon you don't just have to fuse two of your opponent's monsters though and also fuse just one monster your oppon a controls with one of your own monsters as long as the types and attributes line up appropriately if you're able to get elbow on the board you can also use super poly to make mirade with the elbow and one of your opponent's extra deck monsters unlike mud dragon and Gora which have pretty negligible effects on the field mirade is much stronger and can break a whole board by itself which is why using super poly to summon mirade is one of the most impactful things you can do in branded you could also use super poly as a way of dodging imper baa on your aliba by fusing the way the alra in response as long as your opponent has a light or dark monster on the field you can use this trick to make desp kites or masquerade if you're playing it since super poly C me responded to doing this will guarantee that your elev search resolves even if your opponent has a second Ino set since super poly is a crit playay spell it can be used either As A disruption on the opponent's turn or is a board breaker on your own turn which means that the card is pretty good at both going first and going second generally when you go first with super poly you're trying to fuse two of your opponent's monsters into mud dragon or Gora as a way of disrupting the combo and when you go second you're going to be trying to summon elas first so that you can use the super poly to summon nud although depending on what your opponent's end board is using super poly to summon mud dragon or Gora right away with two of their monsters can be a possibility as well when it comes to using ALB as at Super pulley you might think that it's a little bit pointless to use the card like that since the alz already has a built in super Pol like effect however the difference between Al's effect and super pulley is that super pulley cannot be responded to which makes it pretty much impossible for your opponent to stop whereas alas can be stopped by pretty much anything something cool to keep in mind is that you confuse with face down monsters so even a set copy of alas can be used with super poly to make Merit another use for super poly is as a way of pushing for extra damage in the battlef after you've attacked with a cou of monsters you can then use super poly to fuse them into drag stellia or kitis or masquerade and then attack for that last bit of damage this is actually a pretty common otk line since albon has 25 frch attack and miror Jade which is very easy to summon with albon has 3,000 attack trigger stellia which can be summoned using the albon and the mirade as material can then attack for 2700 which is a total of 8,200 damage another thing to know is that super poly can be a target for Verte andaconda this is not just a gimmick it can actually be the best play sometimes for finding legal on turn three and you will often do this as a way of outing Pusa as well super ply can also be a target for Fusion duplication which is something to keep in mind for when you don't access branded Fusion but still have a Thrust or tube in your hand going first overall super poly is super strong in general however it's actually not a card that always sees play in every branded list I don't think it's ever really a big mistake to play Super ply however at the top of competitive play it can be sub optimal to run super poly in certain formats this is because different metad decks and Boards have varying degrees of susceptibility to Super po some bols can be beaten right away by it and then others won't be able to be beaten by super poly at all some boards in between will also only lose the super poly if it's p with albas to make beer a Board of Baron Plus appala for example can immediately be cleared by super poly as you can use it to fuse both monsters into mud dragon a boat of appala Baron regulus and a tera Beast can only really be beaten by super poly if it's p with Alat and then a board of Baron dispart Seline and a secret Village of the spellcasters cannot be beaten by super poly at all as you're going to be locked out of being able to use spell cards at all in general if you're just looking for a standard branded deck for the rank ladder playing Super poly is going to be completely fine in pretty much all formats even if it's slightly suboptimal this card is still going to find a lot of really good uses next is triple tactics twist this is when a Brand's Power Cards going second reason it's only a power card going second and not going first is that in order to search a card the L needs your opponent's controller monster and they also need to have used a monster effect that term if both of those things are true you can useless to search for any normal spell trap in your deck going first it's relatively likely that your AO will use a monster effect at Maxi or Ash but it's pretty rare that they will actually control a monster for that they need to do something like summon aysal or Hess or curin all of which are pretty unlikely overall however when you go second your opponent will almost certainly control a monster and he will almost certainly activate a monster effect the spell carde you search for can be branded Fusion which means going second you pretty much get three additional one cut starters in your de the only catch is that it probably can't be the first card you use as your opponent won't have activated a monster effect yet this makes Thors more like an extender you can use if your opponent uses the end board to stop one of your other stes first you can you can also search for grass which is often stronger than branded fusion and you can also sometimes search for other spells like Fusion de cointment foolish burial and triple tactics talents if you're playing it another really strong Target is evenly matched which is a card you can play in the main deck for Branded in certain formats you can play three copies of evenly masked or just one as an optional search Target for thrust I mentioned that thrust is only a p card going second because its range of targets is much lower when you go first however it is still a good card going first as it's helpful for playing through hand traps when your opponent doesn't control a monster you can only set the card with FL and you're not allowed to activate the card that turn this means that you're limited to only seven cards that are going to be useful on the opponent's turn which means normal spell cards are out of the question and only normal trap cards make for an acceptable Target the best in engine trap card you can set with thrust are Fusion duplication branded King and branded banishment duplication is generally the best option because it does the most while also requiring the least from the rest of your endboard as long as branded Fusion is in the graveyard duplication doesn't require anything else in order to be useful you can copy branded fusion and summon Ida albon or Bellion which then summons mirin by sending two copies of alass to someone lellan this way you could even create multiple disruptions from just the duplication as Jade can now send RRM for cost and the RRM can revive the second alar that is still in your grave yet management is also usable without much setup as it only needs a Target in the graveyard for it to revive however compared to just duplication just banishment usually achieves a lot less as the monsters it most likely summons such just kers and tros to pellia both of which are weaker than a mired and then in order for bried King to be good you need to have been able to summon at least one elb Fusion where it is not a guarantee when you're getting hand trapped outside of the in-engine Trap car D can also set non engine trap cards as well the best options are infinite impermanence dimensional barrier and DaRuMa Karma Cannon it's not uncommon for a branded deck to play inir anyway just as a hand trap or as a crossout Target but by playing imperm you're also giving yourself an additional Target for thrust to set going Frost imp is good because it's pretty generic most X are going to be hurt by imp so you can set it pretty comfortably without knowing anything about your ap's deck the downside to imp is that it's relatively weak and the fact that your opponent knows about it makes it even weaker comic Cannon can be pretty good against decks like ktia ziac and pearly and Salam mangrate as well and dimensional barrier can be really good against tempai or the mirror MCH setting dimensional barrier to do tempai is a pretty practical option since the tempai deck is going to choose to go second if tippens the clim flet so you can reasonably choose to set barrier knowing that it's most likely going to be effective you can maybe do a similar thing in the mirror match as your opponent's deck size being 60 might be a giveaway that they are playing branded although the exact popularity of different 60 card decks in the format is going to make a difference to this setting a non-engine trap card can of to be stronger in terms of disruption than an in-engine one the barer and comma Cannon are very high impact when you result but the downside is that they don't inherently generate any followup or win condition which is something that Fusion duplication specifically is very good at TH is generally played at free copies in most 60 card Brenda decks and 50 card brender decks however it is often cut from 40 card brand attacks in order to make room for the more essential parts of the engine and enough non- engine in general for is kind of an in between card between engine and non-engine it can search your engine spells like brand of fusion and grass but it can also be used to search for non-engine cars like evenly matched and talents you can set engine cards going first like duplication and also non-engine cards like imp and D variant this makes thst a very flexible card to draw and helps combat your opponent's end board very well by having the option of searching for a board breaker if you need it or engine cut if you need that that being said while first can be seen as a non-engine card the card is still really on ever a board breaker and not a handre which means in forers where hand reps are essential for winning the game going second like against Snake Eyes or fiend smid decks you shouldn't be counting thrust as part of your non-engine something else you can deal with thust in the best of three environment is search for your side deck cards like dark roller and hary's feather dtin it also gives you the option of siding less copies of certain cards with the intention of being able to search for them with thrust instead of having to hard draw overall first is pretty standard and branded and you should probably play it all fre even though the card can contribute to Bricks as it is a hard once per turn and it does rely on your opponent playing into it especially going first those downsides are well worth the benefits when it comes to going first having as many ways to beat hand traps as possible in particular as Blossom and Ma SE is actually kind of mandatory and branded next is cold by the grave the this card is pretty simple and every branded deck should be playing two copies of it and if the card ever goes to free then you're going to be playing all three copies of it two of the biggest weaknesses are branded are ash bson and Maxi cold bu STS both of these cards and if you don't need to use the cold by because your opponent doesn't have those cards then it's still a pretty solid dump to set and use on your opponent's turn there's no reason not play called by and it's only going to get better when Master duel releases perua and fuel loss as well so next is incredible Ecclesia The Virtuous this card can be special summoned from the hand if your opponent controls more monsters than you do and it has a quick effect to Tribute itself during the main phase to summon alas from your hand or deck the fact that you can summon a sword soul with this isn't important for Branded although if you are playing the golden sword soul you can technically summon this with this card as well the idea of why this card could be played and branded is that summoning albas on your own turn with it going second can help break boards just like H Fusion deployment does and going first having it on your end board gives you the option of summoning albas on your opponent's turn As A disruption eclesia isn't played in regular branded decks because it's just not something that you need the card going first is pretty much a brick as it needs to be normal summoned as your opponent won't control any monsters and you have a lot of much better normal summons that you'd rather summon at start going second the card is more useful as it does represent another push drawing this card alongside deployment for example will allow you to use the deployment to summon cesia and the Ecclesia will still give you access to Alas all without using your normal sumon however if it's a going second car that you won then it probably makes more sense to just use the deck slot for a board breaker or handra a copy of Talons for example is going to do a pretty good job of helping break the board just like an Ecclesia will one way in which this card has potential is with daspi and Lulu willth lth can special Su Ecclesia from the deck in the end phase which can then be used to summon alas of the opponent's turn getting Lulu willth into the graveyard is possible with granino deerin or Maximus and this combo overall allowed you to generate stronger end boards in particular there's some combos in the spaty section that you'll see later on that allow deployment on its own to be a pretty good combo thanks to to Lulu willth and Ecclesia overall though like I said before it's not mandatory to play this so admitting his many bricks from the deck as possible is a really good argument against it Lulu willth is also not a card that can be easily fitted into the Branded extra day I can see more potential for Ecclesia being played alongside some branded cards and other non-standard versions of branded like Brad Sinker for example best runic or even a version of fusion branded in a world where branded Fusion gets banned next is the bestial Al the loss as caught as a boss monster for bals however since branded is not anywhere close to being a pure Bal deck there's no reason to play this its effect is going to negate your own monsters if you want to summon it and the payoff is pretty much nothing the only place I can seeed this being useful is in some kind of pure bestial stun deck I did briefly consider this card as an option for outing X probably Noah however there are much better options for that next is the besal Ala this card is sometimes used in Bal runic as a tuna monster that can be searched by lellan but it doesn't have a good use in regular branded its effect on summon the discard a card and take one of your opponent's dragon monsters is just too unreliable to be useful if your opponent has no dragon monsters then this card does nothing and it also takes up your normal summon for effect that is probably just worse than any of your other normals the F the best your aliber is treated as full on of alas while on the field or in the gry doesn't actually matter as regular branded has no trouble getting access to elb the only thing that this Cod can do is allow the bestial Sania to send albas to the graveyard overall there's really no reason to play this in branded though and it's not even mandatory in best your runic either in my opinion albas the Ashen is another bad branded card this card's effect to gain attack is pretty useless and its effect to give targeting protection is Impractical because summoning this to your field takes too much investment accessing this card for your searches like branded lost or mcua is also not worth it its ability to spash a summon itself is pretty useless since at best it works as a blocker to stop your opponent's attacks summoning random and bodies to the field and branded doesn't really mean much since you're never link summoning or syro summoning the only world where this is potentially useful is against a deck that relies exclusively on targeting effects however even then I'm not so sure next is chaos nepus this card can banish any card from your opponent's field as well as two cards from your opponent's grave this means that it's an additional way for your branded deck to deal with backr and it's generally pretty good at taking away followup from your opponent since follow effects very often come from the gravat or from continuous spills and traps for example things like original simple spoils Titanic clad Fire King Island nightmare pain and sangin summoning nepus combos pretty well with furious dragon as Furious Dragon will allow you to trigger the nepus whenever you want but it will also trigger with Gan Chimera and branded Beast it's not just you that can trigger nepus your opponent can also trigger it themselves and it will also trigger when either player's card is destroyed this means that your opponent will sometimes trigger the net this all by themselves with things like Fire King Island or nightmare pain this card is generally really good against fire decks because it can banish two important cards from the grey guard every time it's summoned like OSS princess flamberge and garunix it can also banish fing Island from the field which not only removes it from the game but also triggers it to destroy the the opponent's entire board and this even gets around Fire King sanctuary's protection as well says it doesn't destroy the existence of nepus in the graveyard is just threatening for fire decks in general since most of their proactive removal is going to be with destruction things like kin princess and zantis all trigger nepus which makes it harder for them to play into your board nepus can be accessed by grol and is generally pretty good Target to go for especially if you're summoning the granel on your opponent's turn as it can have immediate impact on that term another way to get nap this into the graveyard is by Milling it with grass this is usually the stronger way to use n this as you will also m a bunch of extra light and dart monsters that you could use as fuel to summon it however it does require you to have drawn grass the biggest downside to netf is that it requires monsters in the graveyard to Bish it's usually not that hard to get a light and a dark into the graveyard and branded however you will mostly want to keep those monst is in the graveyard for their own uses this is why it's at its strongest with grass this card is also a brick to draw however you can discard it with one of your many discard effects and it is also a valid Target for High Spirits since it is a wind Beast like renb overall I do think this card is a good option to play and a lot of world's competitors actually chose to play it that being said I do think it's specifically a tech for Fire King Snake ey mainly but but that isn't to say that it doesn't have good uses and other matchups as well next is desia theater of the Branded this is another one of those branded CS that doesn't see play because it's just not REM good enough this cut effect is only marginally better than regular polymerization which means it's not likely to be searched for over your better Fusion spells like branded fusion and branded in white the fact that this card had use over multiple turns is not actually that relevant since branded is mainly focused on building a board on one and isn't desperate from more ways to have follow up on lated tons the extra floating this card gives you is not useful as it relies on your opponent's play into it for it to be good otber is also the only fairy mosda you're ever going to have for this and you're not usually ending with aler on the field and you're also not always ending with aler in the graveyard either that being said this card does have potential in a deck that is specifically aiming to Summit three Mas grades on third one such a deck be more like pure despar than actual branded and it might even include tailman cards as well a tailman branded deck might play this card as a way of replacing polar Rhino and it can even be played as a search Target for Rainbow Bridge overall this card is just not strong enough to see play in regular branded but it does have some potential in different versions of the deck next is New Frontier this is a pretty cute field spell with a cute effect but it's not strong enough to see play in regular branded I'd say it's overall a slightly worse field spell than the despine theater since it can't really make any proactive plays however it is technically a strong disruption by itself the idea is that your opponent special summons from the extra deck and you can then add albas from your deck to the hand and then when they special summon from the extra deck again you can special summon the albas from your hand which will then trigger to fuse into marate it's not bad if it all resolves but it does give your opponent a lot of chance to play around it Scot is also not searchable for some reason and it is also only useful going first I can see this card having some potential but only really in a world where branded Fusion gets banned next is branded bond this card is really disappointing to me if it was a quick play spell instead then it would actually be a really solid option to play in the deck summoning Elis as a cook effect is really good but doing it on a normal spell is Rel relatively underwhelming you already have a lot of better ways to summon albas if you want like Ecclesia and deployment and they can both summon it from the deck something you can't do with branded bond this card is not good enough to be played in any branded deck at all light of the Branded is another bad branded card it's kind of like a mini sanctifier and in fact it's kind of like what branded Bond should have been a quick play spell that can summon Elvis the problem with this card is that it's just is not as strong as of the options the way you would probably access this is with albon's effect in the end phase which means you have to compare it to bre in red branded banishment branded King and even branded retribution there are also a lot of other ways to reborn albas from your graveyard a sanctifier and quam but most importantly renb renb is important because it's basically free as you're always going to get access to it whenever you have mirror Jade on your end board this means that you can always revive albas from your graveyard as long as you access that miror Jade so using a card like lad the Branded but only has this one very specific use is pretty redundant sheling back a Fusion Monster from your field or graveyard is a pretty negligable cost for this card in fact it's actually more of an oide than anything else as it can let you recycle your elb fusions from the graveyard and you can even make flashy plays that involve returning and already used miror Jade from your field to the extra deck so that you can then summon out a new one with the Alat you can also Target any player's Fusion M it doesn't have to be your own so in a mirror match this card could actually be genuinely good enough to play however I don't think there's ever a chance that you may de this card next is Judgment of the Branded when you first read this card you might be tricked into thinking that it's actually pretty good it seems like it could be a searchable quick player which would be pretty strong if it were true the only problem with this card is that it destroys monsters on the field with equal or high air attack and your Fusion Monster all of the fusion monsters in branded are huge smallest ones are 2500 attack that means you don't get to rui your opponent whenever you want instead it's more like removal for just one or potentially two monsters during a choke point in their combo which is suddenly a lot worse the second effect of judgment to reset itself in the end phase if it was discarded by alaz is interesting but doesn't really save the card from being bat screams of the Branded is another card similar to Judgment of the Bandit this card is actually a little bit interesting as it is an easy way to revive miror Jade even from banished the fact that it can summon from banish means you can banish mirade for Branded in red and then summon it back with screams it's also easy to meet the condition of a Fusion Monster being sent to the graveyard that t since Mir Jade sends a monster from the for cost the end phase effect of this card to reset itself is also a little interesting what you can do with this if you have a sp shrouded dragon in the graveyard is use the shrouded Dragon to send screams from your deck to the graveyard since shrouded dragon is called Fallen of malbas in the graveyard this will automatically reset the screams in the end phas so it's a cute little way of getting a free extra disruption overall though it's definitely not worth playing next is branded disciple this card has the ability to negate a monster effect during resolution which is a powerful effect since it can't be responded to however the card in general is still pretty bad deciple is a continuous spell which means it is a target for Rebellion but the other targets we talked about are all much much better than this card for this card to get its m in the gate you pretty much need to have caritis on the field and you then need to resolve corus's effect going out of your way to summon kitis is always pretty lame since it does so little compared to your normal fusion monsters and waiting to get it for free when you're opponent TR as Grand grol is not something that's good either you might think this card is good against ubel since a lot of monsters in the ubel deck on naturally zero attack however it's still not really any better since you always have to control in level eight or higher fiend monster anyway which means you still need to summon the kitis overall this C sucks don't even think about playing it and then the last card I have here for these main Deck cards is probably the worst card that has branded in its name which is branded be fallen branded be fallen is another of the janky lellan Target it's effect to protect your pisal from targeting is not that good since your best deals are not even boss monsters they're pretty much just vanillas on the field so you shouldn't even care if they're being Ted for effects and the effect are further banish monsters from the graveyard if you're opponent tries to respond to your Bal is only going to be relevant if your opponent's deck is already weak to those Bal overall don't play this card except for maybe maybe in a pure bestial deck to protect your Elder loss so now moving on to the extra deck monsters and first up is Mir Jade the ice blade Dragon this is the main boss monster of the Branded deck you're always trying to summon miror Jade every single game usually on your turn one nboard and if not then you're trying to sum it as fast as you can on the opponent's time the way you most often get to marij Jade is with albon and lellan both of these can summon miror Jade directly and you often chain them together by using albon to summon blue Bellion and then they belly in to summon mirade it's also pretty common to summon mirade with the effect of albas since the fusion materials from mirade are very generic reason it's so important to summon this card is that it's just such high value for one card you can technically have an entire gang plan over multiple turns contained within one maraging the main feature of the card is its non-targeting quick effect banish for any monster on the field this effect is really strong and it's also really reliable since most decks are going to be hurt by having them M as banished this same effect also generates followup as it requires you to send an albas Fusion from your extra deck to the graveyard as cost for example albon Titanic lad or Sprint all of which will trigger in the end phase to generate followup the FB mirade sends for cost means that followup is even more reliable than the description since you're still going to be able to get it even if Mar Jade gets negated by something like droplets or in that being said one of the most common monsters you got to send with marij J is actually renr sending renr doesn't generate any follow of the future tends but it does help create more disruptions on that same term if you have albas in the graveyard then sending Ren Brom would allow you to revive the Elbas whenever you want leading to further disruption VI its effect to fuse with the opponent's monsters generally it's best to send RRM with miror J whenever there's an alz in the graveyard or if there's a realistic chance of putting ALB into the gry guard later on in that time something that's kind of confusing about marade is that its effect is not once per 10 but once per two t it says at the end the vanish effect but you cannot activate this effect again next turn what this means is that if you use merid on your own turn you cannot then activate it on the opponent's turn but as soon as it becomes your turn again you can then use the Merit and likewise if you use it on the opponent's turn you won't be able to use it on your next turn we'll have to wait until it becomes the opponent's turn again what's notable about this part of the effect is that it is part of the effect meaning that a gamar get gets negated the part preventing you from using it again next turn won't apply meaning you can still use the miror Jade right away on the next time waiting 21 for Mir did the fight to reset is not really something that comes up very much in most games the reason for this is partly because games are too quick ending in just two or three turns but also because there's a way to get around this problem altogether merid effect to banish is not a hard once per turn so if you summon another copy you can use its effect to banish again since marid banish is one of the stronger dishs you have it makes sense that you would invest resources on the opponent's turn into removing your own miror Jade after using it and then resummoning it to reset its effect the reason you have to first remove the old mirade is that you're only allowed to control one mirade the classic way to reset your marade is to use branded and red targeting albas if you use the ALB and the marade to make look lellan and then use luan's effect to summon the second mirade another way to reset mirade is to use cesia and quam after using the mir's effect you can fuse it away with cesia and then trigger quen to revive back that same Mir banishment sanctifier and renom revive albas are all other ways you can reset mirate providing that you have a way to remove the first one mirade also has another effect when it leaves the field by an opponent's Cod during the the end phase of that turn you can destroy all Mage your opponent controls this effect is often misunderstood so it's important to make sure you know exactly how it works this effect activates when miror Jade leaves the field but doesn't resolve Until the End phase the trigger is optional but once you've activated it you no longer have a choice about whether you can destroy in the end phase or not you'll have to destroy your opponent's monsters this may not sound like it matters but there are rare situations where it's better to leave the monsters on the board so that is something you would have to decide at the time that mirade leaves the field during the end phase you can resolve this destruction at any time you could activate and leave your other spells B1 effects like Titanic and cesia the only difference is that this destruction doesn't activate so neither play can respond to it a nice consequence of this destruction not activating at the time that it moles is that it gets around any monsters that are unaffected by activated effects let chaos Angel exp Noir and psychic end punish it this means that one of your viable hours to those cards includes crashing a mirade into them since mirade does also trigger when destroyed by battle in order for mirade to trigger it does need to be Fusion so if it's revived from the graveyard or from banish then it won't get his trigger effect when it leaves the field this is important to remember so make sure you keep track of where your marriage Aid was summoned from another another thing to keep in mind is that flipping merid face down and then flip summoning it back up does not change the fact that it was Fusion summoned when it comes to what kind of removal actually triggers marriage Aid it's pretty much all of them being destroyed or banished by C effect will trigger miror Jade but it will also Trigg it even if tributed by a Kaiju or spia mode and it will even trig it if used as link material for the opponent's goddess of the closed world the only common form of removal that does doesn't trigger Mar Jade is shuffling it back into the deck and also banishing it face down with a cash Tia cut I mentioned that one of the common ways to summon marade is with albas and this means that super poly is also pretty likely to be able to summon marade all you need to do is access albas since your opponent is very likely to have a monster spat a summon from the extra most branded list play two copies of marriage a this is so that you can summon out a second one after you or your opponent remov is the first one and it's also so you can Shuffle back mirade with the Bellion as material for another mirade if you only had one copy then this play would naturally be possible since AC space in branded is very tight it is occasionally tempting to want to cut one mirade however I don't think this is ever a good idea as miror Jade really is just the best and most practical most in the deck so not having access to a second copy when you could have otherwise is not a situation you want to be in if you're playing branded cards in other decks like branded tier for example you could easily just play one however in a standard boat of branded you for sure want to play two overall merate is actually the most unintuitive card in the deck in my opinion so if you're a beginner and this is confusing to you don't worry that's because the card actually really is confusing that being said understanding marij J to how to use it is key to doing well with branded next is albon the Branded Dragon this is the most common monster you going to summon with branded Fusion mainly because the Cod is just really really efficient summoning Alia with branded Fusion is efficient because it usually gives you access to Mar branded lost and something like branded and bread in the end phase which is already a lot of a good branded endboard the typical light moner you will use as material for this when summoning it with brand Fusion is the bestial lellan the besal lellan is really good as it provides a way for you to put the albon into the graveyard and it gives you a free brand at last in most turn one combos albon's on summon effect diffusion summon will summon mellion which will then trigger to summon mirade going for a lellan like this allows you to keep the albon on the field which means you can then tribute it to summon the Bisal Rebellion once albon's in the graveyard you can use its effect in the end phase to set one of your on targets like branded in red branded King and branded banishment in the case of setting banishment you already have a viable Target in the graveyard for which is the lbon itself this line is the basis for a lot of your combos especially the one card combos as you'll see later on in the combo section even though the besal Rebellion is the best light Target for this you can also make it with other light monsters like cesia and quen sending cesia allows you to access Grand GR and sending quem unless she use it as a better Target for banishment the reason you might want to send these different light Masters is because you already have a lellan in the graveyard which could be because you drew it and then activated its effect to search or because you've Mill lellan with grass Alon is in general really good at pushing for damage as it can pretty reliably put 5,500 damage on the board by itself this is especially relevant on later turns when your graveyard has more cards in it as you can comfortably summon marade or Furious Dragon directly using only monsters from your graveyard when it comes to which Target for Alban's end phase effect is the best the general answer is branded in red however things like the rest of your end board and the metad decks in the format will change this branded in red doesn't always have a tet for example which is why banishment is sometimes needed also some decks like Tans and the mirror match actually have a harder time dealing with banishment than they do Brandon in red raded King can be important for dealing with board break as if the common and even branded retribution can be the better C to set in certain situations once light and Dawn and striping is released banishment actually becomes the primary set which you'll see later on in the combo section as it allows you to easily summon the light and darkness Dragon giving you three onates one other thing to note about albon is that by banishing monsters from your hand field or graveyard is material you can trigger cards like mercuria and sometimes even tragedy to get extra advantage and this can lead to some creative freestyle combos as well another thing you can do with albon in some situations is to summon it but not trigger its answer an effect even though its effect sounds completely free there are times where it's better to not banish anything so that you can better make use of the monsters used to summon albon as well as the cards in your hand an example of a situation like this would be if you drew alra as your starter as well as Gia and branded in red using ala as your normal summon and then searching for Branded Fusion you can use the Branded Fusion to summon the albian by sending ela's at Luan to the graveyard if you then activate the albon in this situation the best you can do is banish the alar and the alar for the Bellion and use it to make mirade and then tribute Alon for the Bol Rebellion which then gets branded lost Alban's effect in the end phase can then set vanish in this situation the Branded in red is useless because there's no target for it and the cesio was never used there was also no way to trigger branded lost on your first turn however if instead you opted to not trigger the AL on on summon the albas would stay in the graveyard allowing you to summon the cesia which then allows you to tricker the Branded lost in that same turn since alaz is in the gry good you now have a target for the Branded in red and you can choose between using it right away to summon miror Jade or even saving it for the opponent's done by the way this end board is a lot better and it was only possible possible because you chose not to activate the Alban's effect another use for not activating Alan's effect is to play slightly better around Maxi since some players actually like to hold Maxi for the effect of Elon overall most people play to Elon since the second one comes up all the time either on the opponent's turn or your next turn so you can't really get away with playing just one next is lell in the Searing Dragon this is another very fundamental piece of Brand's game plan just like albian it is your second most common Target to summon with branded fusion and usually you're going to be using this cards on summon effect to Fusion summon or marate what's nice about lellan is that it confusion summon using materials that are banished in the graveyard or from your field which means it's pretty much always live and it's very difficult for your opponent to stop this using removal effects most of the time when you're summoning marriage a with this you're going to shuffle back the loop ellion itself for its own effect which is important for your grind game as it allows you to keep your Rebellion available for more recycling of your engine on future turns this is the theory behind why you're able to get away with playing just one Rebellion because you can easily Shuffle it back into the extra deck for its own effect the best dark monster to send from your deck to the gray here as material for this with branded Fusion is tragedy as it will trigger allowing you to search for ala or quen the problem with this place specifically is that it requires you to have your normal summon available otherwise the alaro quam that you search is just useless for this reason summoning L Bellum with branded fusion and sending tragedy is usually something that you only do if you were to First access branded Fusion without using your normal s If instead you get the Branded Fusion by normal summoning aliber or keeper it's most likely better to just use your branded Fusion to summon albon instead if you do hard draw the Branded Fusion in your opening hand this line will you send tragedy to search for your normal summon is likely to be the best one to go for in this case aliver can search for Branded red or branded lost or whatever you need to extend your combo optimal as it no longer needs to search for Branded Fusion there are also some other good dark monsters to send for the summon of rebellion like sarinia shr dragon and even a second alz sending sarin or shr dragon can help to complete two halves of the pair that the two of them make together and sending albas allows you to leave that extra elvas in the graveyard so that it can be revived with Ren another option you could send is the dark Floodgate monsters DD oros and DDD Vice King requim summoning these to your opponent's field with sanctifier is going to be game-winning a lot of the time especially or first and especially versus tempai love to do this whole play as a quick effect on the opponent's turn using Fusion duplication if you're not playing a Floodgate monster or you don't need to summon one using dup for lellan can also create followup by sending tragedy anyway another really important part of lellan is that a discards a card from your hand as cost this discard is what allows you to play as many perks as you do since you're usually going to need the discard something fullu Bellion anyway therefore it's okay to draw one bad card it can also be used to your advantage when you draw cards with relevant graveyard effects like retribution and branded sword one thing to note about lilion is that it plays around B deals much better than albon as lellan doesn't care about having its Fusion materials banished from the grave yet so if you're playing against aysal deck like Centon then you can consider prioritizing Rebellion over albon just to play around them overall Rebellion is always played as a one of with the idea being that it can recycle itself that being said Reb bilion won't be able to recycle itself if you're using it to summon something like Furious dragon or sanctify which means you would lose your only lellan forever for this reason it would be nice to find space for two like branded lists used to do in the past however there really isn't enough room anymore which is why you have to settle for playing just one next is Alon the sanctifier dragon this card is most well known for summoning Floodgate monsters like gim puppet Nightmare and Jon G puppet and Jan are both banned now but there are other monsters that do a very similar thing that are still legal like DD offers DDD Vice King reum and AR Christia the idea behind these cards is very simple sanctify can summon any monster to either side of the field so by summoning CS like recum and or rosty your opponent side of the field you can lock them under the restrictions that those cards have or rose has a lingering effect that prevents you from special summoning any monsters that aren't fiends and reum has a continuous effect that prevents you from special summoning anything besides DDD monsters since it's your opponent that's going to control these cards they are the ones that are locked in the case of summoning something like artifex site you would instead summon it to your own field so that you get to activate sight's effect and the same is probably true for crestia as well these FL gates are really strong and are potentially game winning by themselves however they aren't mandatory to play in branded and sanctifier is still a good card even when you're not using it to summon a Floodgate and another way to use sanctifier is to summon albz to your field allowing you to fuse with your opponent's monsters since sanctifier puts a monster on your opponent's field as well you can even give your opponent a monster for your alas to fuse with if they don't already have one of their own this is a pretty powerful disruption and would honestly be a pretty fundamental part of Brandon's game plan and a feature of most NBS if it wasn't for the fact that albas is already easy to revive on the opponent's turn with RN brm and Quinn another part of sanctifier that is important is that it can't be targeted by your opponent's card effects which makes it a lot harder to remove with things like sp sp little Knight and Unchained soul of Rage it's also immune to every runic Cur and cannot be negated by imper this targeting protection sometimes helps sanctifier stay on the board from multiple turns which helps play into the card's next strength which is the extra Grind game that it offers you since sanctify can revive any two monsters from either graveyard during every opponent's turn you can use it during a Grind game to constantly revive your marads Furious dragon and even Spring's kit to recycle spells and traps it is also able to revive quen which is important because quam is then able to revive sanctifier so if you are able to perfectly control the game you do theoretically have a very longlasting resource Loop between these two cards this doesn't come up a lot but when it does it helps to understand how it works as it can be the difference between outg grinding your opponent and getting out grinded yourself one example of a time where this might come up is if you're trying to outlast an ex pearly Noir or psychic and Punisher sanctifier is critical to winning games against unable monsters like this as it's the only card that can give your opponent's small monsters in attack position for you to then repeatedly attack into for damage over multiple times the other huge use case for sanctifier is as a way of playing into Maxi if your opponent chains Maxi to branded Fusion the chances are that the best play is to just summon sanctifier and give your opponent only one draw sanctifier can lead to a lot of disruption by itself if you able to successfully revive the elar and resolve its effect if you weren't plain sanctifier in your extra deck this auction wouldn't be available toam another really good use for sanctify is as a way being evenly matched by using sanctify to summon a monster to your opponent's field and now unable to use a match and if you summon that moner in defense position then they aren't able to crash that monster to remove it either sanctifier is really good in the Branded mirror match the reason for this is that it can't be used as fusion material which means it's immune to your opponent's albas banishment and super poly sanctifier can also steal good monsters out of the opponent's graveyard like the albas mirade and cesia so that you can use them for yourself another good match up for this card is against stun decks against Ric St sanctifier is immune to all the runic spells and as a light monster it can also Al still be special summoned if the opponent has a light barrier statue against the more pure stun Decks that use fossil Diner and moon mirror Shield satify is very hard for them to out as it cannot be targeted by punishment Crackdown or fairy tale Luna and it cannot be fused away with super poly either sanctifier also has a second effect in the grade yet however this effect is basically irrelevant as it just never comes up I think I've only ever resolved this effect two or three times ever in and I've probably played thousands of games of bred at this point the only thing I will say is that because it's so rare there is zero chance that your opponent will play around this with their Zone placement so if it ever does get close to coming up keep it in mind as your opponent is likely to stumble enter one last thing to keep in mind about sanctifier is that it can only be activated during your opponent's turn so don't make the mistake of summoning it on your own town expecting to be able to immediately revive when it overall sanctifier is mandatory and branded but you definitely need only one next is Titanic lad the ash Dragon this card is mainly used for his end phase effect in the end phase of this card is in the graveyard you can Splash or summon a dogmatical monster from your deck the target for this is quen which is a good cut to have on your end board as it can revive things like mirade alvas and cesia and it's on suon effect helps you get albas into the graveyard Titanic Cloud can also Al summon albas from the deck which can often be a lot stronger than summoning quen if your opponent has a moster on the board for albas diffuser if you're going second you will often send Titanic back to your graveyard with the intention of using it to some albas in the end phase and then using that alvas to help break the opponent's board this is also something you can do if you're triggering tianic at the end of your opponent's turn as well in general if you're triggering Titanic on your turn your target is probably qu and if if you drink any on time too or later your tet is likely alas the way you normally get Titanic pder into the graveyard is not by summoning it but by sending into the graveyard with gruel Mira Jade or Brandon and High Spirits a lot of turn one combos that include gr gral will send Titanic lad and a lot of T combos that include High Spirits will also send Titanic and this is something that you will see during the combo section if you don't have albas in the graveyard during the opponent's time then you don't really want to send renr for the cost of marage Aid so instead you can send Titanic in general Titanic is the second best card to send for marade after renr as it can summon alvas from the deck during the end phase to help break the opponent's board another way to send Titanic light to the graveyard is with Mia servant and Maximus so if you are playing these cards then you have even more chances to access Titanic lad during your combos so this card is mainly used to be sent Direct ly from the extra deck to the graveyard but you can also summon it from time to time summoning Titanic pad is something you can do as a way of putting extra damage on the board as it will have higher attack than any other alvas fusion and this can make the difference between doing lethal damage or not Alaba for example can perform an otk against an empty board in less than five summons by using Titanic without Titanic clad there is no way to of dek with just Alaba and if you do have other cards it's still not likely that you going be able to play around the beer Tien could also be used to out bake monsters that you otherwise can't attack over and one R of the usual Titanic CL is as a monster that you can tribute for L Bellion sometimes your alud has to fuse into this with its effect since your opponent doesn't control any extra diagnosis or maybe you've already have a marade on the field this is something that comes up against cash cards Labyrinth and rescue a quite a lot over all Titanic B is a much needed part of the deck it helps a lot with axis and quem and is also important as the only albas Fusion in most lists that can summon albas from the deck you can't play without this card but you do only need one if you want to recycle this you can put it back into the extra Deck with lilion as material for furious dragon as Titanic clat is a dark dragon monster next is Ren the Striking Dragon the main use for this card is to be sent to the graveyard with marij Jade so that it can then use its effect to revive alz on the opponent's turn by far the most likely way you're going to send this to the graveyard is with miror Jade but you can occasionally send it with High Spirits Grand gal or by actually Fusion summoning into it and then having it go to the graveyard naturally setting up miror on the field and alas in the graveyard as a basic for most of your end boards allows you to have a solid game plan for disrupting the opponent and ren brm plays a big role in them Ren Brom also has an effect on the field although how impactful this effect is is a little dependent on the magic most decks will use the extra deck at some point mean that Ren brm will have viable cards to NE gate however some decks will be able to easily clear the ren brm with their main deck plays first Fire King cards can pop Ren Brom without needing to use the extra deck snake eye can push it into the backer with flamb Burge tempai can use a board breaker like reri first and Yubel can summon Phantom of Yubel which can immediately negate the RRM another issue for rrms on Field Effect is the possibility of your opponent chain blocking important Triggers on their extra deeg monsters since Ren brom's effect has to chain directly to the card is negating that being said Ren brm is still a very powerful disruption against a lot of good cards like cibian princess SP little Knight and tman kid kellos this effect can also be pretty good at help them to break a board too by immediately checking certain endboard cards like IP mascarena appoa and cashier AR rise hot when you negate a card with rrom you also get to bounce any must on the field to the hand this makes the effect extra powerful As A disruption as you can bounce the monster uni Gade back to the extra deck but you can also return any other monster on the field to the hand instead including potentially your own cards some turn one combos actually make use of this by negating your own mirade with renb and then bouncing something like kit alabra or the belly in back to your hand for followup negating your own miror Jade this way also allows you to get a free send for the miror Jade as by negating its effect it Remains live for the following turn remember that if your mirade is negated the part of the effect that prevents you from using it again next turn doesn't apply it's not super often that you summon rrum during a turn one combo usually it's the kind of thing that you only get to do when you have really powerful hands and you have to go uninterrupted as well well summoning Ren BR with braded pan can be really good when pair with a pisel since you can summon Ren Bron using luua as material which you can then banish from the graveyard with that bisel lines like this usually lead to end bullets that are above average and strength however they don't come up that often and they do play into hand traps pretty poorly something important to note about RRM is that you cannot special summon it from the graveyard with its effect if it wasn't first properly summoned this is a question I've been asked a lot of times if you send Ren Rong to the graveyard with miror Jade then it wasn't properly Fusion cement which means you aren't able to revive it even with its own effect if you activate renr in this situation you will only have the option of providing elz in order to special summon RRM with its own effect you would have to first Fusion summon it from the extra deck pretty much all branded lists I've seen play one copy of renm with just a few in the past that sometimes choose to play two during cash ti forat so that unicorn didn't banish their own copy so overall you should just play one next is Sprint the iron Dash Dragon this is a card that isn't always played in branded decks however the main reason for there is a lack of space in the extra deck if you could play just one or two more cards in your extra deck I think Sprint would probably make it into almost every branded deck it's kind it an elow Fusion that similar to tanic L is made used for its effect in the graveyard and the end phase Sprint is able to speci a summon or add to the hand a sprink monster which in branded is just kit special summoning kit during the end phase can allow you to add branded in red from your deck to the hand and then use that branded in red right away to Fusion summon and adding kit to your hand can be used as a way of generating followup Sprint can also add Elbas to the hand or special summon it from the deck just like Titanic special summoning albas in your opponent's end phase when allow you to fuse with their monsters and adding it to the hand can again help with followup special summoning alas of your own and phase can be a way of breaking boards or as a way of setting up for plays with cuts easier on the opponent's turn in general I find that playing Sprint helps mainly because it adds a second target for beade that is able to special summon albas during the opponent's end phase even though Ren Brum is the usual Target for marij Jade desend is not always the right option as you don't always have albas in the graveyard and after after rrom Titanic CL is usually the next best one because it provides the option of summoning albas in the end phase however if you've already used your titten CL during turn one then you won't have it available to send from miror Jade anymore which means without having Sprint in your extra deck you're limited to having to send something else like a second copy of albon or the rro anyway even though you get no value from it playing Sprint helps to ensure that you don't run into the situation and it allows you to use your miror it multiple times without having to send a resource that you didn't want to Sprint can also be summoned although it's something you would do only very rarely its effect is able to destroy spell and trap cards which is actually pretty good when it comes up you can use this to destroy continuous SPS of traps that are providing followup for your opponent like opening of the spirit Gates nightmare pain crash Ste birth and even branded regain or you can even use it to out flood gates like beon be only one and Power syn Stone one rare use for Sprint is as a way of outing contact c as you can use the contact c as material for Sprint whereas know where the albas fusion can be made using contact C if you're just playing regular master or ladder contact C is not a card you would expect to see much of but if you are playing in best of three tournaments where side decks exists or Challenger cup where you could play whatever you want at any time contact C is a more realistic possibility for what it's worth though Gan kind mer also out Contex and then the last she the Sprint which is often given as the main benefit of the card is that it allows albas to fuse with anything at all on the opponent's board so long as it was special summon this can be important for matchups where your opponent doesn't often summon from the extra deck and our monsters aren't lights or darks cash TI is really the main example of this but it can also come up against Fire King and breast ERS overall Sprint is an interesting option that a one of lists do choose to play what a lot of lists also don't usually you see the lists that don't need to play M dragon or Gora because they're not playing Super poly are the ones that have Sprint since they have more room for I think that if you have room for this you should play it however it's definitely not an essential card for having success with branded the deck is still able to complete its full game plan in most games without needing Sprint next is Ban the glory Dragon this is another Al Fusion that doesn't really see play however unlike sprin this cut isn't really that close to seeing Play either it's very similar to Titanic and sprin in the sense that it would be mainly played to be sent to the graveyard for its end phase effect in the end phase if it's in the graveyard you can search for or summon albas from your deck which has all the same advantages as doing it with Titanic lead and Spenders bri can also search for or special summon a tri Brigade monster which in stand of branded decks is just mcua adding mcua in your own end phase is nice because it's a negate for the opponent's turn and if you're using Briand in your opponent's end phase you can summon albas instead Briand is not really a moner you what have summon even if you were playing it as its effects on the field are pretty underwhelming especially compared to the other fusions if you do summon it though it can be occasionally useful for its targeting protection and the fact that it can't be destroyed by means it can be a good attack blocker as well one small advantage of playing briend is that it turns kit into a valid Target for highs since they are both Beast monsters there's also one combo you'll see later on in the combo section that actually does use brigand as part of the combo overall prand is kind of cool but overall you don't need it you can always search for mcua with branded lost during the opponent's turn so there's no need to search for it during the end phase I don't recommend you include this cting of deck next is alitus the abyss Dragon this card is interesting as it is the only most that you can play in branded that you can contact fuse into what makes it even more interesting is that you can also use any number of monsters Shona controls for this contact Fusion summon as well so long as the materials are all dragons summoning this card is not an activated effect so it cannot be responded to just like a link or a Synchro this makes it a good way to get around only NE Gates and against Decks that do have a lot of dragons on the end board you can actually clear a whole Board of monsters with just one albz you don't need to activate the albz you can just normal summon it or spash a summone it with deployment in fact you can even set the elbow's face down and you will still be able to contact fuse into ala lenus against Dragon link this is a really flashy play as you canuse away things like Savage dragon seals and Boral and dragon all in one go also against Centurion it's really good as you can clear oilla and C blazar Dragon one other match up where elb lenis can be good is the Branded mirror MCH as there are a lot of possible dragons that your opponent could have on that endboard and if they ever have albas on the endboard themselves you can even contact fuse into lenitas using only their monsters out of everything though the best MIP for lanitas is actually tempai using Lulu WTH to negate the Tempi field spell and then feeing away their entire field of Dragons using albas is a solid game plan against that deck so against tempai specifically lences is very strong in general though while alalas might sound like a really strong cting Theory because you're getting good removal for free in practice it's actually a lot worse than it sounds the removal going second is not free at all since you have to commit your normal summon or your Fusion deployment into elbaz and once alitus is on the field it is pretty much just a 2500 attack vanilla monster its effect to attack multiple times is kind of lame since you can only attack monsters and it's only 2500 attack which isn't even enough to attack over a lot of common boss moners it will be better if it could attack directly multiple times that way it wouldn't feel like as much of a vanilla monster if you are playing lenus there are some really cool BR combos you can do with keeper that involved using Keeper's second effect to summon alz remember that you can use face down Dragon MERS as material for lenus so you can use the face down albz and the keeper to summon a two material alal lenus if you then have a way to get to mura before activating branded Fusion you're able to set up a negate for ash Blossom to protect your branded Fusion although this is a combo that is pretty rad even if you are playing lenus one last thing to note about Alpha lenus is that that if you contact fuse into it it will not track a branded lost and it will not create a branded lost window this is because summoning lenus this way is not considered a fusion summon overall I don't think lenses is a great card in general even in matchups like Dragon link and soron it can be a bit of a trap sometimes the exception to this is tempai if you are expecting a low tempai like in the current format then it's pretty worth it to play lenus so at least for now this card is good next is gruol the dust Dragon this is not an albas Fusion instead it's a cesia fusion you summon this card a lot using cesia on your first turn particularly when you draw Fusion deployment it's not the only target you make with cesia but it is the most common you typically use this to send Titanic clad to the graveyard in order to then get quem during the end phase you can also send cenia to that put retribution into the graveyard and if you've already used the Serenia that time you could shr Dragon instead so that you can complete the pair with serin this means that you're able to use Gran canol to help access your branded Fusion if you don't have a way to se for it directly if you're playing a level six or higher flood game Monster like crestia or Rum then this is going to be the main way that you get them into the graveyard gral is also a light spellcaster which means it can be used as the material for sanctifier which is how you can then summon these floodgates to the field another Target you can send with this effect is renm sending Ren burm is something you might do if you're making granel on the opponent's stand as it can translate into immediate description if you also haven't albas in your graveyard P net this is another good Target that will catch a lot of players off guard this card is not something most players are going to expect you to send so it can be pretty clutch especially if you're making grol on the opponent's turn something you can do if you have all the setup you need already is send Gora Gora will allow you to draw a card which would allow you to try and find a non-engine card the back up your full combo you can also do is on the opponent's hand to draw a card which might be crucial in order to have a card in hand to discard for the effective albas granino also has its other effect to special summon a desp a monster from your extra deck or a dogmatica monster from your main deck the main targets for this are quam and kitis summoning quam is usually a higher priority since quam can actually affect the board State and also translates into actual disruption kritis is mainly played to be a backup Target for the many times where you already have access to your quad since this effect is not an essential part of the game plan for Branded you definitely don't want to be including a secondary Target in the main deck since it would just be a waste of space and it's not worth the amount of times that you draw it so instead the secondary Target should be in the extra deck even though corus's effect is underwhelming you still want to play it because this second effect of grol is complet completely free most of the time so you don't want to ever let it go to waste if you play more than one qu you also have the option of summoning a second quem from your deck even if you already have a quem on your end board it is still potentially good to get that second use of the unsummon effective Quinn in truth a secondary Target for grol is not actually needed in the deck at all as it's often either just an addition to an already strong board or if you're not able to make a good board is just a way to slow the opponent down a little bit before they inevitably beat you anyway so you could make a good argument that the backup Target should be cut from the extra de all together this second effect of gr canol is a lot less situational than it sounds pretty much every deck in the game will play into this effect at some point during its combos some examples of cards that commonly end up triggering grono are papla flamb garunix princess Spirit of Yubel Aly canah hook rise hard heavy Borger lady Labyrinth be of star rust an opponent's albon fi with requium Crimson Dragon low pearly as well as just about any card in the Tan's deck tempai is also a deck that triggers granino although with tempai it's important to keep track of when exactly you're allowed to trick a grino c like gen Roku Biden and chandra's hand effect will all Trad gruel however Cher's damaged up effect will not since gruol can not be used in the damage T fer is also able to trigger it but only if its effect is used on summon and not during the damage TP you also have to keep in mind that you're often not able to activate effects during the battle phase at all due to Transcendent dragon or metor burst there's also the effects to synchr summon which do not in fact Trigg a grino as they are making a synchr summon happen rather than special summoning a monster as part of the effect some other important cards that trigger granino are pistals gamma and neiru this is important to point out as the are all hand traps that your opponent could potentially use during your turn one combo if you have grino on your field or in the graveyard by the time those hand traps resolve you can trigger it allowing you to special summon Quan during your main phase this is extra powerful since it's still going to be your tone which means you have a wider range of uses for that quam something to note about grol is that you can sometimes use both of its effects in the same chain if you chain cut easier to the effect of something like a Bisal and then summon a Gran quinel with it both effects of Gro are going to trigger on the same chain it's important to make sure that you always use the first effect as chain Le one and the second effect is chaining two if you use the second effect as chaining one then you won't be able to activate the first effect since grol has left its tricker location so keep in mind that there is only one way to order this Jun CH one is your effect to send and chain two is your effect to summon one interesting additional option you could play that what's well with Gro is desp lul sending this C to the graveyard when a liar to special summon any light spellcaster whose attack equals its own defense from your handled deck in the end phas this can be quem but it can also be cesia and it can even be incredible Ecclesia The Virtuous Ecclesia gives you the option of something El as from the deck As A disruption and summoning cesia means that you don't have to commit your Clum effect to Reviving The cesia on the opponent's turn generally Lulu Lilith is not important enough to be worth playing but it definitely does make your deck stronger especially when you play it alongside eclesia one tip for using grandol is not to rush in activating its second effect on the opponent's strength especially while the grand gr is on the field in slower matchups it can sometimes be worth more to let the grol go to the graveyard naturally first so that you get more value out of its body on the field this won't matter for most matchups but like I said in slower ones like brunic and Labyrinth this could be something to consider overall gradol is a stap and branded you can't get away without playing this card a lot of lists do run just one but a good amount of lists actually choose to play two as well you definitely only need one for the game plan of branded to function however a second copy can very often make your game playay a lot smoother especially if you're trying to summon a Floodgate with sanctify having the option of summoning one Gro on your turn and then another on the opponent's turn makes a lot of your plays involving cesia and quam a lot smoother as you have a very easy Monster to summon with cesia that also provides impact on the opponent's turn the advantage of playing just one is that it saves one extra deck space which is a big deal since Brand's extra Deck is extremely tight one of the best branded players in the game right now is player and here was their opinion on how many grono should be played my personal opinion is that you shouldn't play more than one grono however it is completely fine to play too if you think you have the room for it next is despian kitis this card is played because you can summon it for free with grino if it wasn't for grino you probably wouldn't be playing this card at all however since it is in your extra deck it helps to know how you can best utilize its effects the most obvious way to use kitas is at the end of your opponent's main phase you can make all of their monsters zero attack and prevent them from being able to attack over your important small monsters like quam and cesia since you summon a kius mostly on the opponent's turn when they trigger your Gro this is how you'll most likely be using kitis a lot of decks don't really have an issue forcing this card out early and then doing a lot of extra damage afterwards so it's not really that reliable at preventing an otk but it does still make an impact Decks that usually struggle to otk like Labyrinth would definitely be stopped from doing so by this card reducing attack Bo to zero is not really strong enough to be considered a disruption however against specifically appoa the attack reduction is pretty much a quick effect in NE gate since epoa has to reduce its attack in order to resolve its negate something that sometimes comes up with kitis is that your opponent will attempt to end the main phrase in order to bait out corus's effect since the main use for ktis is just stopping an otk you should actually consider allowing them to go into the battle phase anyway knowing that you can't be out decayed because what they have on the board currently is not lethal damage from that perspective it's actually kind of like katus did his job successfully even though you didn't activate its effect another use for the attack reduction is on your own turn you can use it to reduce the attack of a bunch of attack position losses your opponent controls and then attack into them all for lethal damage G is a second effect to float into albas or desia Monster is a nice bonus that makes it a little harder to deal with however it is pretty difficult to make great use out of this since it relies on your opponent to trigger it it won't trigger when katus is destroyed by battle and it also won't trigger when banish Face Down by ktera mostes or when shoveled back into the extra deck by something like dynamond when you do get to trigger this though it is pretty good as you can summon albear and Fus your opponent's monster either As A disruption if it's your opponent's turn or as a board breaking tool if it's your turn you could also summon quen and Alaba as ways to extend as well one way you might trick your opponent into triggering this is by chaining cesia to Fusion summon it in response to a mass destruction effect like garunix eternity overall though this effective kers just like its was direct really only serve to slow your opponent down a bit as most metad decks are not going to struggle that much with playing around it as lantis otk for example can play around kittis nicely by banishing it with zantis and then returning it to the field face down it won't trigger from this since Kus left its trigger location and it also won't trigger later on when destroyed by Princess or zenes as it has to be face up in order to trigger one other good use of kittis is in combination with super poly to dodge imp pal and baa on your Al if your opponent controls a light or dark monster you can use super poly in response to the imper to remove the alra from the field therefore allowing its effect to resolve overall katus is a car that you probably should play based on the fire that you can get it for free with grino it's also going to make your super poly plays a little bit smoother and your banishment plays a little bit smoother as well that being said it's not the most important cut in the world so you could consider cutting it if you really needed the [Music] space next is masquerade the Blazing Dragon this is something that is missing from the extra deck of most branded decks these days the reason for this is very simply that there is not enough space for it the card is really good as a potential Target for super poly in the exact same way that qutis is using it to dodge imper and vea on your alibo it's also pretty useful when you're going for an opdk as it will tax the opponent when they try to use effects to keep themselves alive in tournaments with time rolls masquerade also helps you win in time too which is actually a very important quality of the card in tournaments where there are side decks you can actually consider siding one masquerade just to side into it when there's not a lot of time left on the round there are also some match ups where masquerades burn effect is too much for them to ignore and so they have to go out of their way to deal with it at some point snake eye ritual beast and flu on the can all be examples of a deck Like That masquerade is also an immediate auto win against specifically Dino morphia which is very funny and against Dex it gives a lot of transaction roll backs like paleon Labyrinth masquerade can be a way of suddenly stealing a game that would have otherwise been quite complicated the way masquerade bur effect works is that it applies immediately before the opponent activates their Carter effect masquerade does not activate so it cannot be responded to and since the burn happens before the card resolves any CS that would remove masquerade like white gey or lightning stor will still cost your opponent to 600 I personally really like masquerade and I'll always play it if I get the chance but the timal way to play standard branded probably doesn't include it I sometimes replace Kus for masquerade since they do fulfill a similar role the only difference is that masr cannot be summoned with GR in other versions of branded like branded tier for example masquerade could be a good additional option for going first as it's a lot easier to make with the extra fusions from happiness and sharing and you could even play multiple masquerades and make the stacking burn part of your main wi condition next is Gora wings of resonant life this card is played because it's one of the best generic targets for super pulling a lot of archetypes generally have monsters that have the same type and attribute there's some meta examples like yell with dark fiends tempai with fire dragons and snake eye with popla and Ash but it's also just true in general it costs a lot of different decks and formats this means you can pretty reliably disrupt your opponent on their turn with a super poly fusing away two of their monsters into gura when you're using super poly as a board breaker gura can still be an option some decks like Sprite for example can have the end board broken by a super poly summoning aora however in general NBS do tend to be a bit more mixed with types and attributes because of generic endboard pieces like appoa and mascarena for this reason super poly for Guera tends to be a play that you do more often on your opponent's turn as a way of removing two monsters from their field as a disruption against snake eye the best time to do this is usually when they have Ash and polar in the field removing Ash here can deny them access to flamb Burge and there's a chance that if you wait any longer they could actually play around super poly or threatened to remove it using cards like link bow nightmare fakes and SP little Knight against you B it could be harder to deny them their combo pieces with this but everything is still a dark fiend so you can remove two monsters whenever it looks like they might be trying to summon yamama against tempai you can consider removing their monsters as soon as they are threatened to summon black R Dragon however you need to watch out for sangan summoning since it will protect their monsters from Super poly so if you are playing Super pulley in your branded deck it makes a lot of sense to be playing Gora since the card works so naturally with it however there are still uses for super poly without Guera so you could consider not playing this card even if your deck is playing Super poly the reason to do this would be either to make space in the actra deck for other cards or if the format has a lot of decks that don't play monsters at the same type and attribute that being said Gora is also not just a super poly Target as it does also have other relevant effects one other use for this is to send it directly from the extra to the graveyard with gruol in order to draw a card this is something you might do if you're completely losing and your last result is to try and draw something off the top of your deck and you might also do this in the exact opposite situation too where you already have everything you need to win and you're just drawing a card because there's nothing else you need if you're playing this a stun and most of your engine it will play the useless under certain blood Gates then this could be an option where you send Gora to try and dra pod so that you can draw through your deck to find your Els faster you can also send Guera to the graveyard with Nadia servant and automatic maxus in fact if you're playing Nadia servant Guera is pretty mandatory for optimal lines and then the last use you might get out of Guera is for its double damage effect when Guera hits your opponent directly it does 3,000 damage which means it's not Unthinkable that you could need this for an otk as there is only a fairly limited number of other 3K beaters in the brand of extra deck Gora can be summoned by a lot of the usual Fusion summon effects like Alon dellion and branded in white and you can of course use super Poly on your own moners in the battle phase to summon Gora as well overall I think this card is worth playing if you're playing Super poly and I think it's even worth playing without super poly if you are playing in a ds7 package if however you're not playing either of those then gura is probably a Wasted Spot in the extra deck as its uses with just Gran all or as an optional Monster to summon sometimes are definitely not worth it and it's better to just play a different card instead next is mud dragon of the swamp this card is similar to Gora in the sense that it's mainly played as a super poly tet while Gora is more suited to being used as a super poly Target on the opponent's turn mud dragon is generally more suited to being the super holy Target for your own turn as it's generally more likely to be summonable with two monsters on your opponent's end Bol two monsters with the same attribute with different types is less restrictive of a requirement than two monsters with the same attribute and type against the snake ey fireing inboard for example amblo whale plus AATA can be fused into mud dragon as can amow whale plus flamber Baron plus appala can be fused into M Dragon which is relevant against dechs like super heavy Samurai and man adum voiceless voice end boards are entirely light monsters any two of which can be fused into mud dragon and there are many more examples you can also sometimes make mud dragon on the opponent's turn by using the card as a disruption if a fire deck like snake eye or rescue a tries to make a play with forian Princess super poly is a really good way of shutting that down I guess rescue a sometimes mud dragon is needed to prevent turbulence from resolving as some of the rescues most us have different types which makes Guera not always possible to summon once M dragon is on the field it does have a pretty useful effect being able to protect your monsters from targeting is a nice effect to have at any point in the game but especially right away when you use super poly to clear the opponent and board monsters and then use mud dragon to call dark to protect your elra from their impls and veilers branded is mostly dark monsters with a few light monsters sprinkled in so you can get pretty good coverage from mud dragon calling dark for the rest of the turn your albian effect for example will also benefit from mud dragon's protection later on there are a few examples of cute tricks you can do with M Dragon since its effect actually also prevents your opponent from tting the over monsters as well if you call fire with mud dragon princess is unable to use its effect in the grave yet since it can't Target a fire most of the opponent controls if you call dark against tement kid colors cannot use it second effect to Target itself and you can also prevent Vanquish soul from targeting their own monsters with heavy bger and seiz it another cute trick you can do with mud dragon is in combination with renum renom can change your own monsters so you can use mud dragon's effect to call an attribute and then negate it with renom allowing you to bounce a monster at any time you want this is something you can do as a disruption or just for free value at the end of your opponent's turn or even at the start of your own turn to Bouch Your Own St Des back to hand so because of my drons by you on the field you can sometimes summon it with your engine in order to play against certain Decks that rely a lot on targeting res runic and even fairy tale Luna stun are all examples of decks that need to play a lot of targeting kinds overall though M dragon is generally just a super poly Target just like aora while it has other uses they aren't enough on their own to make the Cod playable due to how tight the Branded extra DEC next stays Gan Chimera this is one of Brandon's iconic power plays the idea is that you summon this as a quick effect on your opponent's turn with branded in red turning its effect into a really impactful disruption CA destroys cards and draws cards which means in addition to being a disruption it can also generate followup when you use Chimera often you will have a choice between destroying two cards and drawing one or destroying one card and drawing two these two options both sound pretty good and you might think that they are both used pretty equally across different situations however in practice using Chimera to destroy two codes is the much more relevant way to use it the reason for this is that at the part of the game where you're normally trying to use Chimera the most important objective at that time is usually just to disrupt your opponent from playing remember that you're summoning Chimera with Brandon a red and on the opponent's t which means you've already performed your 10 one combo and are now using your end board to disrupt your opponent generating follow-up is important for Branded however you never need to rely on godi and P drawing cards for this as you have plenty of other guaranteed ways to create follow-up like the end phase effects of your alas fusions and cartesia something you can't do with Chimera is go all the way to either side and draw three cards or destroy three cards Chimera does stipulate that you have to use at least one monster as material from your hand and at least one moner from the field and of course Three Monsters overall which means there are only two options for how to use Chimera chimera's effect to destroy two curs is a powerful disruption and it's call it's simply able to remove two cards at the same time which is stronger than a lot of your other destructions and also the fact that it could destroy any kind of card like Monsters spells and traps face UPS face Downs is also really good the fact that it doesn't Target is extra good and something that makes cerra's effect even stronger is branded loss if bled and red was activated as chic one then your opponent wouldn't be able to respond to your Chimera effect due to the Branded lost window which means they can't negate it or do something otherwise to prepare for that cause being destroyed if they wanted to resolve something before Chimera resolves they didn't to chain it to the Branded in red which is very preemptive and therefore easier for you to exploit by summoning Chimera in a slightly different way or maybe not even summoning Chimera at all so chimer is one of your stest disruptions and it used to be a cool part of the game plan back in the original versions of branded which leads a lot of players to believe that it is still the coold part of Brandon's game in reality though I don't think this is true to me Chimera is more of a situational card that comes up sometimes rather than a c part of the game plan reason I think this comes down to the way that you typically want to sequence your disruptions with a branded endboard if you consider an endboard like this for example it has mirror Jade which is a disruption it has branded in red which is a disruption and it has albas in the graveyard which combined with RRM results in a third disruption and it also has branded lost which can search for mcua as a fourth description as well with an end board like this sequencing of descriptions is very important as you can only really access all of your disruptions if you SE with them in the right order for starters the target for Branded in bread here is just albat and material for Chimera would have to be the miror Jade and the lellan from the field as well as the albas from the hand when you add it back with brown and red going for Chimera as your first destrution would immediately kill the rest of your destructions as You' be removing your miror Jade as well as the albas from the graveyard searching from AA would brand up at last also doesn't do anything without an Albert's Fusion on the field which Guardian pay Merit is not in order to make the most of this endboard and use all four deceptions you would have to save the Branded in bread for last making Chimera your last disruption you would start with ver Jade Vanishing it upon this monster and you send renom to the graveyard his cost then you can use the renom to revive the alar and use its effect to fuse away it upon its monster which would then put the albis back into the graveyard as well as trigger the Brad had lost to search for mcua in this position if your albas was able to fuse into another albas Fusion then you are now free to use the Branded in red targeting the albas to then summon Chimera so long as you leave an albas Fusion on the field so that you can still use mcua if albas wasn't able to put another albas Fusion onto the field then in order to still use mcua you need to wait until after using the mccu in a gate before going for Chimera this is just one example of a possible branded end board but this concept of ordering disruptions being important especially when it comes to branded in red is actually pretty common throughout a lot of different endb what this all means is that using branded and red to Su of chimera can sometimes be a little awkward on certain end boards as using it too early can take away from the rest of your descriptions that being said don't get the wrong idea Chimera is still a very strong card and summoning it with branded and bread is still absolutely powerful play and you're going to do it a lot you just have to be careful with exactly how and when do it another important part of chimera is that it's one of the few ways branded has to deal with backro while Furious is in general the main way you deal with backro Guardian Chimera is still pretty good setting up branded in red when you go first against the back row deck means that you can clear two of your opponents back row in the end phase using chimerin this is really good as it helps you overwhelm them with Advantage where she is exactly how you want to win against decks like Labyrinth and paleo and it also has a good chance of destroying powerful foot Gates before they can be flipped like skill drain rivalry and there can be only one heading foot Gates is the main advantage to this play against stun decks as well you can also use Chimera going second to help break a board as Brandon already is not limited to being used on the opponent's turn using it on your own turn can help you dodge things like imper and veiler as you can fuse away the monsters on your field into Chimera before the imperal balum solves something else you can do when using Chimera going second is to chain block its effect with another trigger something like mcua or tragedy for example can trigger when banished by brandage and red so you can use those as a chain link too to prevent your opponent from being able to negate Chimera with something like Baron appoa or even Ash Blossom you can also create a chain block using branded lost or quem or using certain other quick effects in response to your branded and red like cesia or branded opening something else that's important to keep in mind when breaking a board with Chimera is that you can also summon the card with branded and white this is not always as effective or as common as summoning it with branded in red since branded in white is not a cook effect but it is still for the most part exactly the same ging Chimera used to be a more relevant part of branded back before it had all of it support when the deck didn't have cesia Ren Bram or quem using bran and bread to summon Chimera was actually crucial to having a strong enough enbol mirate on its own was not an all so you needed Chimera to make up the difference one of the cards that was played in this earlier version of branded was ad lium desp this card worked really well with Chimera as you could use this card with branded and red to banish it alongside mirade as the materials for Chimera ad Li but then trigger to re summon the marade which should then be able to use its effect to Bish again something also worked really well with Chimera in the past was the patchwor engine you can use polymerization on your own turn to summon Chimera and use its effect as a means of breaking a Bo this was made easier by the fact that the patchwor engine was also capable of searching for edent chains which was a free extra monster you could use as material from the hand playing Kar in a build of branded that has the patchwor engine also that you take advantage of kyber's second effect which is that it cannot be targeted by Cod effects while polymerization is in the grave since branded has gotten stronger though the need for Chimera largely disappeared and like I've said it's now just more of an option one important thing to keep in mind with Chimera is that it requires Three Monsters with different names so you can't use two of the same monster you can however use stuff like your hand traps Ash Blossom Maxi or whatever else you might be playing as material if you need to another important thing to remember is that Chimera can only get its effect when summoned by a spill effect using cesia to summon Chimera is a classic beginner mistake as it is a legal play however the Chimera won't be able to activate its effect if you summon it this way and then the last thing I want to mention about Chimera is that it has 3,300 attack in general getting over 3,000 attack is a critical threshold as most boss monsters do see to cap out at 3,000 so chimer is a very strong part of branded that is probably going to be in your list that being said I do think Chimera is not quite mandatory and can actually be cut for other cards if you really want I personally have had a lot of success with branded on things like the rated ladder at tournaments and in DOS cups while not playing chimer at all however I am honestly uncertain about whether or not it was optimal the not play Chimera at those times so overall without complicating it too much I'd say that Chimera is optional in standed branded next is Barlo Furious Dragon this card is mandatory in my opinion definitely more so than Chimera there's never been a format since I started playing branded that I didn't want this card in my deck the main useful Furious dragon is removing spelling chap cuts which is important in branded since you only have a limited number of ways to do it compared to the other main option for backro removal Guardian Chimera Furious dragon is by far the best the main reasons Furious Dragon does it better than Chimera is that it's a quick effect that you can use at any time so you can use it right away after summoning it or you can just use it at the end of your opponent's turnon on a card that they just set you can chain it to the effect of the field spell or continuous spell in order to effectively negate it and you can even use Furious Dragon during a branded lost window so that your opponent C respond to it another thing is that you can use its effect again and again turn after to turn without needing any setup as a result of this you can comfortably snip random back row in your opponent's end phase with furious without worrying about not having the out to a potential Floodgate on your next turn the only thing that Furious Dragon can't do that gy and Chimera can is destroy two cards at the same time so in a situation where it's a essential that you remove two cards only godi and Chimera will do the job similarly if your objective is just to create card advantage over your opponent Chimera again does a better job than Furious that being said in pretty much all of the situations Furious dragon is a more useful tool as it's just more flexible and precise you can think of G and Chimera as being like a sledgehammer a furious dragon as being a smaller handheld Hammer Chimera might be more powerful but good good luck trying to be precise with it and good luck trying to use it more than once you can pretty easily summon a furious Dragon using most of your standard ways to Fusion summon albian can summon this lellan can summon this cesia branded in white even albas as a fact can summon Furious Dragon since its materials are dark dragons and alz is a dark dragon the materials of two dark dragons are very easy to access as well albon and alaza dark dragons as well as Titanic CL shroud Dragon keeper of dragon magic and all of the pistoles you won't normally summon a furious dragon on time one instead it's something you usually make on the opponent's tent or on your own follow-up tents it's also not something you have to make exclusively to deal with backr as it can still Target monsters with its effects as well since you can only control one marade Furious Dragon often gets summoned with your extra resources just because it's an extra disruption that you have the means to make if you're ever resolving albas on the opponent's turn and making albon for example then one of the most likely monsters you're going to summon with that albon is furious dragon and when you do this you can use things like the albon Titanic clad and sirenia that you might have used on turn one as material from the gravat this play is even nicer when you're using the Bellion since it will also recycle some of the resources in the process one card that has some good Synergy with furious dragon is branded opening using branded openings effect in the graveyard to protect Fusion Monster will allow you to use Furious Dragon deflect without needing to actually lose one of your own monsters even Target itself for example and then during resolution use branded opening to protect the Furious from being destroyed another car that has good Synergy with furious dragon is chaos nepus nepus will trigger when any card is destroyed by Furious meaning that your Furious Dragon effectively becomes two disruptions in one Furious dragon can also be revived with cosic banishment and sanctifier allowing you to still have access to its backro removal even after you're upon a a furious Dragon the first time a trick you can do with furious is to dodge impa Anda on aliba by destroying it in response and another trick you can do is to destroy your own marade after using it so that you can then clear the way for summoning another one and finally the last thing I want to mention that is important about Furious dragon is that you can sometimes summon it with super poly using your opponent's monsters in certain matches Centurion for example plays a lot of dark dragons as does the mirror match Dragon link and also any deck that decides to play Bisal there is a second effect on Furious dragon and if you're playing Verte Anaconda it can technically be used however this effect is genuinely the single the relevant effect in the whole deck you are in my estimate hundreds of times more likely to win a game because of sanctify as graveyard effect than you are with furious's so overall I think Furious is a mandatory part of brended you need to play this for efficient backround removal and as an additional boss monster to channel your resources into out of this C is cutable at all next is preda plant drao stellia this is another card similar to Furious dragon that has a relevant disruption on the opponent's turn as a quick effect it can negate the effects of a monster and make that monster become level one it's important to realize that this card only negates activated effects not continuous ones add it only negates while dellia is on the field on the other hand though the counters it puts onto monsters will remain that even when the dellia leaves the field so those monsters will remain level one forever the level modulation can sometimes be useful by itself this can disrupt Synchro or exceed plays and against Bisal for example you could prevent leilan from summoning itself from the graveyard since the Bisal is no longer level six tros dellia works very well with branded banishments the reason for this is that the most likely monster you're going to be of diffusion summon with banishment is drao dilia albon the most common Target to revive with vanishment is a Fusion Monster which means there only needs to be a dark monster on either side of the field for banishment to be able to summon draes to Pia this is a pretty strong play to do early on in the opponent's turn because itless you use Dr toell as negate against more potential tid and also let you search for Aura with branded lost earlier on as well dra stellia also works well with superb unlike Gora and mud dragon dellia has a useful effect on the field which means if you're ever able to fuse your opponent's mosters into this it's much stronger than just making CA or mudj Drell is also really easy to make with your own deck monsters as you're playing a lot of fusions and most of your monsters are also dark so if you're ever going for lethal with super poly in your battle phase it's very likely that you're going to be able to fuse your own board no matter what it is into drer stellia one other important use for drer stellia is as a means of of clearing your mirror Jade on your opponent's turn so that you can then replace it with another one as I just mentioned it's really easy to sumon draer stellia with your own monsters and mirade can be used as one of those materials the idea is that you use cesia to fuse away your own mirade and then revive it back with quem the monster that you're likely to be summoning with that cesia is in fact Dragon stelia overall dellia is a very good cotton branded that has a lot of useful lications however it's not absolutely essential for your game plan if you're not playing Management in your deck then Dr is to pellia actually becomes less needed and especially without super poly it becomes even less needed I wouldn't say this card is mandatory but if you are playing it management of super poly that is it's probably better to play Dr stellia also once light and da a stagon is released in master du it is going to replace dilia for the most part next is predaplant ver Anaconda this is the only link monster that sees play in standard branded decks and his main purpose is to copy branded diffusion with its effect and summon Mirage Aid using itself as material you have to summon marij directly with Verte instead of going through albon orbell and first because vert's effect L you out of special summoning for the rest of the time after it results when you summon mirade with v it's actually a bit stronger than what you normally summon marade since by going into marade directly the fullen ofas gets to stay in the graveyard allowing it to be revived on the opponent's turn with renr this is why summoning sanctifier with v is not necessary as you already have the means to use alabas on the opponent's turn by going for mirade instead one thing that ver is pretty famous for is playing around Ash bossom since but effect effect cannot be ashed even if it's attempting to copy something that candy ashed the way you normally use Verte to play around Ash and branded Fusion is to forgo searching for Branded fusion and instead focus on summoning two monsters to the field without locking yourself into fusions this isn't as trivial as it sounds since a lot of the cars that special summon monsters to the field and branded actually do lock you into fusions like opening and deployment so instead you normally get two bodies using things that cesia kit and Bisal as well as your normal suit playing around Ash like this normally leads to a weaker end board however it can still be pretty strong depending on what you draw the minimum end board for a vert play is still mirror Jade Plus albas in the graveyard so if you canare that with a branded in red a duplication or some non-engine cards then your endboard is definitely not too weak sometimes making a birthday play is something you can do in response to getting Hench in which case your endb doesn't always have to be as strong since your opponent is already down on one card Al pellan for example would never normally aim to summon berte however if your ala gets impound then the backup plan would be to link some Verte using the bisti and the Alaba also there are some branded hands that have no other option but to go reverting for example if you only playable engine cards are rebellion and tragedy then the only way you can make it play here is with Verte one other thing that comes up sometimes is using BR on later TS to copy super polling which can be a good way of outing something like Pusa it could also be used as a way of clearing some monsters that might otherwise be annoying to get rid of like kierin or fer something important to keep in mind when going forver play is that you cannot special summon for the rest of the turn after it resolves which includes summoning in the end phase with Titanic PL this means that if you are going to use high SP or gruol it's better to send alond R and Tian Panic lad since albon will still be able to get value in the end phase overall but is kind of needed in branded it helps make awkward hands playable and it can also let you outplay against an obvious Ash Blossom like I said already there are hands that need to prev into Verte after being hand trapped and there are also times where your hand loses so hard to Ash that you have no choice but to go for a Verte play to play around it if you weren't playing birthday then a lot of these situations would result in losses instead of potenti potential wins meaning you're very likely to miss Verte if you cut it I think the card is mandatory however it is technically not impossible to play without it next is despian prian this card is an alternative to kitis most of these CS are usually only ever included and branded because they can be summoned for free with gr Goodell's second effect in general citis is played because it can make it harder for your opponent to otk increasing your survivability panian can also do a similar thing since it's a 3200 attack body that is capable of summoning back another blocker from your opponent's gradar unlike cortis though pinan has the potential to make some pretty powerful plays like steing boss Masters out of your opponent's graveyard Baron defur SB little Knight and Chaos Angel for example are all very powerful monsters that you can steal and then use for yourself you can also choose to banish moners instead of summoning them which is something you might do against cos like princess when it comes to actually Fusion summoning prian it is harder to do them chitis since it requires Three Monsters as material this makes it much harder to use than ktis in Practical situations like as a way of dodging imperm on your alibra or as a super poly tet when it comes to the Branded mirror match Brenan is actually a really good cod as it can steal important monsters out of your opponent's graveyard like miror Jade and Furious dragon or banish important monsters like albon and Brin Brom it also acts as a stronger Target for super poly and banishment if you are going to use banian it's important to be aware of what monsters you can legally summon from the opponent's grave here anything that wasn't properly summoned from the actra deck first cannot be special summoned with banian to this day one of my favorite lines in braded is using panian against sword Soul standard and board a baron cha and a protos luck you can use pran to completely break this board if you have super poly and a desp use super poly to fuse the desia with the chesa and the produst into prescan bidon then attacks over the baron and you can then revive the baron to your field in main Phase 2 this is a game-winning play when it reses while salil is a little bit outdated now ritual Beast is currently still using protos so a similar play could be made in that match up too overall penan is an interesting alter to C I don't personally prefer it over ktis however the difference between them is admittedly pretty small both of them will have specific uses that make them worth playing over the other however really both of them are equally fine one thing I will say though is that even though I think kritis is slightly smooth at to play when it comes to Super poly and banishment playing a card that your opponent expects less definitely has this advantages even if K is a slight slightly more optimal for example and therefore more commonly played linian instead is still going to catch a lot of people off guard and it might make them misplay next is Magnum the reliever this is a card that doesn't see much plain standard branded decks however it's not actually a terrible cut in TCG deck list like this one Magnum seems to be more popular but in master door this card is pretty much non-existent this card offers two things the first thing it offers is followup recycling cards from your gry good as well as drawing cards and then the second thing it offers is a disruption the issue with this card is that while its effects are okay they aren't overly powerful so other options are almost always better the effect to recycle branded Fusion is not actually that needed since branded Fusion is very easily accessible from the graveyard anyway in fact I'd argue it's may be even more accessible from the grave guard than it is from the deck the disruption that magn has is also pretty mid targeting one card on the field and destroying it is a solid effect but it's nothing special especially when compared to Mira Jade Furious Dragon Chimera renir and sanctify having a chain directly to a cter effect as well as banish a fusion spell from your raveyard also makes this effect situational on top of being mid you can banish super polymerization for this as well as Fusion deployment doesn't just have to be branded Fusion but if you don't have those cards then you might have to banish the Branded Fusion in order to use this which is not very ideal Magnum is a little better in other builds are branded like a runic version for example or a k version but in standard branded it's not really worth the exex L the one thing that this card had going for it is that you can forcibly draw a card during the course of your combos which isn't something you can do a lot of however overall again I really just think this isn't worth it next is light and darkness Dragon Lord this card is not yet released in mad all as of the time of making this video however when it does release this card will be an immediate stable in every good branded thing what makes this card so good is that it's an omn negate and not just one omn negate but three omn negates even though the cause effect is mandatory so it will negate whatever card gets used first it's still a really powerful disruption you might think it's awkward because your opponent can bait it out with bad cards and also because indicates your own cards as well however in practice I don't think these are huge weaknesses because your opponent still only has a limited number of plays so negating three of them is almost certainly going to have an impact when it comes to negating your own cards all you have to do is not activate anything of your own until you've used all three negates from light and darkness Dragon you'll summon this card pretty easily using banishment the most common Target to revive with banishment is albon which is half the material acquired to summon this card if you have the best L Bellion on your field from your turn one combo then you can use it alongside the albian summoned light and darkness Dragon banishment and this is actually the exact line that you'll see in most of the turn one combos from the combo section asides summoning it with banishment you can also pretty easily summon this with any of your other ways diffusion summon as well if you ever summon lellan on the opponent's turn then you can pretty easily summon light and darkness Dragon since level L dark dragons are very easy to come by and branded if you play with this card a lot I'm sure you will realize just how easy it is to summon in practice one thing to note about this cause negate effect is that it does only negate monster effects or the activation of spell and trap CS what it doesn't negate is the effects of spell and trap C so any anything that is already face upon the field or that activates in the graveyard is not going to be negated by this cut what this means is that when you Fusion summon this card with banishment or by any other means you can actually trigger branded lost and resolve it this makes a lot of the one card combo lines better as you can still easily access mcua for that extra negate after you summon this card if you have other trick is when this card is summon like Quan for example you can easily play around this card negating your own cards by ordering your chains correctly if branded lost is the highest chain link then light dness dragon won't neate anything similarly branded lost also prevents your Fusion summon effects from having their activation negated even by your own cards so even while light and Don dragon is on the field cosc ALB cesia albon and lellan will still resolve normally the second effect of light and darkness dragon is also really relevant being destroyed by an opponent's card includes being destroyed by battle which means it's not as trivial for the opponent to get around this card's floating effect as it is with kitis if you have Elbas in the graveyard when this card is destroyed you can special summon it with this effect which will then allow you to use the Elbas to fuse away the opponent's board this is something you have a lot of other ways to do in branded however lighten donus dragon is the only realistic way you have to potentially trigger Elbas in the damage dep triggering Elbas in the damage dep is extra power powerful as there's a lot less cards that can be used to stop it impo for example C be used you can even summon this card on your own turn and end up crashing it into the opponent's monster in order to revive albas and damage them this is a play that is similar to how Fire King cards and onchain cards often utilize the damage de to help resolve their cards even if you're not Reviving albas with this effect Reviving something else like albon just for value is still nice as you can trigger its effect again during in the end phase if your opponent attacks over it overall this card is absolutely amazing and once it's released it should be in every branded deck ever until the end of time next is predaplant trifo verum I mentioned this card before when talking about alpad at the start of his section the reason why it's worth mentioning is that it is a potential Target for alaz and super ply in the future free dark monsters on the field is not actually that likely of an end board so you could potentially beat a board like this with super pone and having the ability to fuse away two monsters at the same time with alz is also pretty good there's no match up at the moment except for like maybe the mirror match where this is good but in the future that could very easily be a deck that this is good against while on the field this card has a solemn warning like effect and it also sheniz a little bit with drag stellia increasing its attack and also being able to revive itself from the grard its effects don't really matter though what's important is that you just remember that this card exists just in case it ever becomes a viable Target for super poly or Alber next is starving benom Fusion Dragon this is a card that has been used as a super poly Target in the past it's also been used as a way of outing xer Noir by gaining a lot of attack points this better out in a want now though and py is also not that relevant of a deck anymore so there's no reason to play St having benom as a noara with Gora and mud dren making it so that super poly can always fuse two monsters with the same attribute together it makes starving vom pretty obsolete so there's no real reason to play this card anymore next is despian luno W this is a card that doesn't seem much play however I think it's actually a pretty interesting option since this card is a desia monster it can actually be summoned from the extra Deck with the second effect of grino as an alternative to kritis and crinian the reason you might want to summon this card instead of one of those other options is that Lulu wenth actually provides a genuine disruption this cut can negate the effects of any card on the field this can be pretty good against tempai using Lulu willth to negate their sank and summoning can allow the rest of your end board to now affect the tempai monsters and using Lulu to negate bind and dragon while it's summoned is also pretty good it's nice to have an option like this against Senpai because kidas and pinan will never do the job of keeping you alive in that match up another thing you can do with Lulu is to send it to the graveyard with the other effect of granino sending Lulu would allow you to get its effect in the end phase which can special summon quem cesia or Ecclesia from the deck summoning Ecclesia is a nice play and it's something I personally like to do in my fun builds of branded as it can allow you to summon albas on the opponent's turn as quick effect since it's already very easy to summon alas on the opponent's turn playing Lulu and Ecclesia just for this purpose is a little bit redundant however it is very fun and it can work pretty well against decks with a lot of Bisal as they would be able to counter things like RN Brom and sanctifier but not eclesia you can also play Lulu as an extra Target to send to the graveyard with the deer servant and Maximus having extra targets to be able to send to the Grave vett is always nice when you're playing these cards as it allows you strongest hands to make even stronger end boards instead of being redundant and then the last thing you can do with theth is actually SRO summon it this isn't something that will happen a lot but it could technically happen remember that crime and cesia are both Tunas something to keep in mind with Luna Willi is that you can't summon it with grino during the turn that your Fusion L and remember that it is possible to Fusion luck yourself on the opponent's turn with L Bellion overall littleit is a good card to play especially versus tempai although I don't think it's actually mandatory versus tempai it just has a few theoretical nice uses also even though not a lot of list are paying attention to this card it's definitely still good enough to see play at the competitive level I recommend trying this card out and see if you like it next is bti old desata this is a cool boss monster for bises much better than Alba loves and you can play this in a a Synchro oriented B of branded like this one this is a list from Nash that includes a couple of Synchro monsters as part of the main game plan VI 101 combos but there are also other versions of sinkro branded that play even more sinkers the advantage of cards like Baron and Omega is that they work better against board Breakers than a standard branded end board does in a format where tempai is roed popular or any Deck with board breakers for that matter this kind of build has more reason to be played this pter works pretty well with with Omega allowing you to perform a two card hand Loop and there will be some exact combos for this in the combo section as well this P isn't the kind of card you playing regular branded since Synchro summoning is just too rare and unlikely to come up but it is the strong card that offers a nice description and follow up for a Synchro branded deck next is chaos Angel this is another cute card you could play in Synchro branded however you can also technically play this in regular branded as well something I've done before in douas cups where runix stun was very popular is actually play a chaos angel in my extra deck in regular branded the idea is that it can banish runic fountain or outer flu gate and it can even attack on the Synchro Zone caning could also be worth including if there's a match up in the meta where the card is just un audable when it's summoned using a light in a dark if there is ever a deck that doesn't usually play iner or droplets as a means of hard drawing an out to Kos Angel then you could po potentially exploit that deck by going out of your way to Synchro Summon a chaos Angel remember that you don't actually need a tuna to summon this card so you can just use things like ala Plus aysal for example or aysal plus alas overall kenal is a cute idea but it's not something you should waste a slot on without a good reason next is dogmatic Calamity out the system as of the time of making this video this card is not yet released with an English name so the actual name for this is probably going to be different the setup for this card's effect to send all cards in the actra deck to the Grave good is not impossible as you do have six different albis fusions in most branded lists however it is pretty impractical and would never be the reason you play this card the better part of this card is its effect to attack all monsters your opponent controls and send one card from your EXT de to the graveyard each time you do this can be a powerful play as it's not once per turn it's just once per attack so you can send all kinds of Cs like this and get their beneficial effects not just albis fusions like renm and albon but also CS like gura gruol Lula Willet and even cards that aren't normally played in branded like Alder and de entis and fery attacking over a full Board Of Monsters and sending lots of cost to your graveyard is the most likely way that you're going to be able to set up for this C's other effect the fact that this card is 4,500 attack is also pretty nice for Branded since branded is pretty distinctly lacking in the ability to summon a huge monster the biggest monsters you can summon are Chimera and light and dongon which are both only just over the 3,000 attack Benchmark so having access to a car that is 4,500 attack definitely offers some easier on KS the big downside to this card and the reason it's ultimately just not that good is that its materials are way too intensive summoning this card is too hard and if you are able to summon this card because you have turns up set up you can probably just easily win the game anyway without needing this card so overall this card is more gimmicky than playable however I could see some interesting idea for a fun gimmick version of branded that aims to send a bunch of interesting monsters to the graveyard with this effect next is chaos star Souls Dragon this is a pretty cool card in branded and and was this released in madol it will be a staple in my opinion this is another way of destroying backro that is relatively easy to summon which means once it's released in combination with Chimera and Furious Dragon branded will no longer really have a distinct lack of backer REM at all this card is kind of like a halfway between G and Chimera and Furious Dragon it is easier to make than Chimera what also still destroys two cuts it's not reusable every time like Furious dragon but it is just as easy to summon in fact it's actually slightly easier the fact that this cut targets does make it weaker than Chimera and of course it doesn't draw cards the way that Chimera does and it also has less attack however the ease of summoning this in my opinion actually makes up for this there is a second effect of this card when it gets banished however this effect is completely irrelevant and would only ever come up in theory to help you summon the bastial Rebellion overall this is definitely a card that I'll be experimenting with once it's released and I suspect it will be a pretty staple card over roll and now the last cards I have here are the two aamina fusions asamina cards are playable and branded and these are the two fusions that you would likely play if you did however the aamina engine would also include main Deck cards like sacred aamina simple spoils deception and then some number of diell does and wanted the main use of asamina cars is that they can set up Sila which is an omni okay since you can set this up with just one card without using a normal summon and also without summoning anything from the extra de other than fusion monsters it means you can easily play this in a branded deck in order to protect your branded plays from hand trips if you don't need to use the negate on a hand trap then it ends up making your NBO stronger as well the main advantage specifically would be using Silvera to negate Ash bossom on branded Fusion once dominous impulse releases in masted all there will be another hand trap that is as reliable as Ash and stocking branded and it canate branded Fusion in the same way that Ash does this would make the as AA engine all the more impactful and important the downside to an engine like this is that it would be a lot of additional engine cards added into a deck that is already pretty tight on space for non-engine Branded is also known for having a lot of bricks already so adding in an extra one in the form of sacred asamina is also not ideal overall I think the AL negate engine like this would easily outweigh the weaknesses so I would be looking at playing as a Mina was the r least in M overall I think that the Al neate is still likely to outweigh the weaknesses so I would be wanting to experiment with these cards once they are released in master however I do suspect that they will not make the final cut of an optimal branded deck also lastly there are two other cars that I want to mention the first is a Stella and the second one is red eyes dark draon a stellar is a white forest monster that has been somewhat hyped for its ability to spash a summon quam cesia from the deck this might be a playable normal summon in some other Decks that use quam and cesia however it's not good as a normal summon branded using a normal summon to get quam cut easier is usually what bad branded hands do and you'd rather be summoning aliver or keepa instead a stellar is playable as a Target to send to the graveyard with branded Fusion though since it actually has a prettyy good graveyard effect allowing it to special summon itself if you discard a spell of chap card with lellan or any of your other discard effects for that matter Estella can revive itself which then allows you to get access to cesia or Quan for free overall I think playing one Estella is good but it's definitely not mandatory and the downside of playing it is that theck now has one extra brick in it even if you argue that EST stellard is not a prick since it can still be a relevant normal summon it's not an ideal starter and it would probably be taking up the deck space of a non-engine card anyway which means that drawing it is still a Bad Thing overall including one Estella in your deck pretty much only improves some of your one cut Combos and most hands that have multiple engine cards are probably going to completely ignore the Estella and now for draon draon is recently un abandoned Master doll and it is a very playable card in branded this card offers a clean Al in the game and it's also exceptionally good at pushing for lethal as well certain decks will have a lot of trouble outting this card like runic Labyrinth stun rescue a and even Fire King Snake Eye there's a lot of specific combos that can summon this card however it's also a good card to summon freestyle rather than with any specific line by taking advantage of the fact that you can access Dark Magician in a variety of different ways you can summon Dark Magician with Fusion deployment which you can hard draw or search for with keeper Dragon magic grol can send dark magici into the graveyard and you can also send it with branded Fusion or duplication for Branded Fusion you can also Mill it with grass or simply draw it in your opening hand another way of using draon is with a light hex sealed Fusion this car can substitute itself for DOT magician allowing you to access dracoon by sending this to the graveyard with branded Fusion as material for albian this could be important since it allows for better combos however the downside of using the hex seal instead of Dark Magician itself is that you won't be able to use dra's effect to destroy a monster as it won't have been summoned with any normal monsters often a combination of both is played so you could have all of the possible options available another way of using Dron is with Duality and I think overall this is my favorite way of using Tren Duality can Target your grol and then turn it into a Dr this is really strong when it happens however it does require you to hard draw The Duality Duality does have other uses it can also turn Maximus into ton and it can also be used with your other engine cards like turning lellan either of them into bar of furious Dragon you can also turn a dark dragon like albon into Alon the sanctifier dragon we'll go over the specific combos with summoning draon in the combo section however I will say now that I don't don't think this card is mandatory in branded at all that being said it is still pretty good and if summoning in om negate makes a crucial difference in a certain matchup or a certain format then I could easily see dracoon being part of a standard deck list as it stands right now though I don't think it's a mistake to play draon and I don't think it's a mistake to not play draon either so now that I've covered all of the relevant engine cards are branded let's move on to looking at some actual deck lists before I move on though one thing I want to say is if you've seen my previous branded guide I did a similar section where I went over every card in detail a lot of the points I've made about the Cs in that video will be the same as the ones I've made about their same cards in this one but some of them will be different and in some cases I might have even given completely opposite opinions to what I did before I recommend taking the advice of this video over my previous one as I am a better player with Brandon now than I was back then and the format in my older guide is also more updated this video also has more time and effort put into it so less Corners were cut on the explanations anyway let's move on to looking at some actual deck lists so here is what I think a standard branded deck list should look like when I say standard what I really mean for this list specifically is an average competitive level deck list it's not exactly something that I personally play but it is close and there's a lot of good branded theory in this deck list as well also instead of showing a deck list specific to the current format this one is a little more generic so a list like this is going to stay pretty good across multiple different formats if you were to copy this deck list for yourself it would perform perfectly fine in any format really at any level of play first thing you might notice about this deck is that it's 60 cards in general at the competitive level branded is mainly played as the 60 card version and there are multiple good reasons for this biggest advantage of playing 60 CS is that you have access to Grass Grass is a big p bler branded that 40 card versions just don't have you might think that because grass is just a oneoff playing the 60 card deck just for the few times that you get the drel grass is not a good idea however while that is true when you go first when you go second you also have those three copies of thrust which can search for grass making the number of times you have access to Grass much higher the other main advantage of playing six to cards is that you minimize the chances of drawing your Pricks this allows you to realistically fit more bricks into the deck which translates into having more options available for different situations notice for example that this list is playing three different targets for albon a fora could never be able to do this as it would take up too much Deck space and cause too many hands to be filled with bricks another advantage of playing 60 cards that doesn't get brought up as often is that in addition to minimizing the chances of drawing your bricks you're also minimizing the chances of drawing multiples of the same stars or extenders as well as the chances of drawing multiple normal summons this means that on average your hands are going to have more ability to push through an opponent's board or through hand TRS since you have that higher chance of drawing two different engine cut also in these situations if you're not hand trapped then it also means that your end board might be stronger as well since you had two different cards to work with this effect is even more pronounced by the fact that this card is playing Nidia servant as one of its starters rather than playing more copies of the normal summons like keeper and Quan a 60 card deck is overall less consistent at drawing any specific card which is not always a bad thing as like I said drawing bricks and duplicates less consistently is actually beneficial when it comes to being less consistent at drawing a ST card 60 card decks don't have to be worth 40 card decks there's a lot of excess STS in branded but a 40 card deck just won't play because it doesn't need that many stars even this 60 card list is not maxing out on keeper of dragon magic for example and that's because the deck is not struggling to have enough starus so you can easily play as many as you need to fit the size of your deck red can easily just dip further into the pool of playable stares if it needs to the only kind of lower consistency that 60 codex cannot really compensate for is the lower chance of drawing specific Irreplaceable cards like your outs to Maxi and Ash Blossom a for card deck would be more consistent at drawing cold by the grave which is one of the best drawers in branded realistically since it can stop either Maxi or Ash Blossom 40 card decks also have a higher chance of drawing the best starters like alra and branded Fusion itself overall though these advantages of being able to draw less bricks draw less duplicates and play more bricks as well as have access to Grass actually really outweighs the downsides of drawing those specific cards less often in the 60 card decks in my opinion so now if we take a closer look at this deck you you can see that some of the theory we talked about in the going over card section is reflected in the deck building to start with the best starter cards like aliver and goldar are being Maxell while the Worster starters like keeper of dragon magic and kit are not qu and cesia are being played at just one copy each since you do only need one copy and they aren't that good to draw you can see that we are playing the mandatory besal which is one Serenia and one lellan along with an additional lellan as a choice because it's often good to draw and the one magn because it is an extra star to go in second we're playing all fre copies of alar to have a better Grind game and it also keeps the number of cars that pair well with brandan High Spirits high enough bricks like tragedy and mcua are kept at one cupy each since they suck to troll and there's also no l Of Darkness to make good use of them in the hand we're playing the n package since it's a really powerful engine for going first due to its ability to push well into hand traps ad dson is best played alongside Maximus which is why we're playing it and we're also playing the Gora in the exod deck which is needed for the Nadia compos as well you can see that we're playing as many outs to Maxi and Ash Blossom as possible which makes sense since those two cards are two of branded biggest weaknesses you don't always see cross out in branded decks mainly due to the that Ash Blossom is also not always in the deck however to me it makes sense to play them both since like I said you are trying to add Maxi and Ash bossom as often as possible so at least in a generic list like this where the list isn't tailored towards any one specific matchup an idea like this can be pretty good this is one of the benefits of playing three thrust as well along with a fusion duplication as a means of playing through these powerful hand CHS should you go first there's also this one copy of inom which looks kind of random but playing it actually allows you to negate inom with cross out and choose to set the Imp or SE it with thrust it's also a reliable hand trap in its own right so it's not like it's a brick you can see that we're playing two copies of Retribution which I think is optimal drawing retribution is so much less of a problem if you have a second one available in your deck and using both copies over the C of a Grind game is not uncommon either [Music] gred sword is in here which helps make grass a stronger card as well as providing an extra means of creating disruption by adding back the one mcua if we have to banish it during the course of our combo branded sword also means that if we do get to execute certain combos uninterrupted then we actually have a lot more options for executing really strong combos as you'll see in the combos since we're playing Super poly in here it makes sense that we are playing m dragon as well as the garera and as a result some of the more optional monsters have been cut from the extra deck like Drago stellia and the second Gro and then you might also notice that this deck is not playing a Floodgate monster for sanctifier like recum or Christia in general I don't think a Floodgate is necessary for Branded especially if you're not playing in the most competitive of settings in certain formats Floodgate Monsters make more sense as the best decks are sometimes only reliably stoed by a Floodgate when snake ey was at full power for example a Floodgate like gimmi puppet nightmare was more necessary for Branded to compete so what you could do if you were playing in a format like that is replace some card that is not mandatory like maybe the Magnum or the banishment with a requim or Christia you can then also try to fit in multiple copies of duplication since duplication becomes a lot better of a card when you're playing a flu gate and it is package for example which consists of three cards total in the main deck could nicely be replaced with a flip gate monster which is a brick so you're replacing Maximus which is a brick with another brick and then two additional copies of duplication can be swapped out for the tadia when it comes to the non-engine I've chosen ones for this list that are more generic rather than being specific to one format super poly Maxi and Ash are always going to be good and so is this impo but whether or not they are exactly optimal at the competitive level does definitely depend more on the format you can see that there are 14 one cut starters in this deck I'm including grass as a one cut starter here because most of the time it will be able to play on its own even though there is a chance that the Grass Mills will do nothing the chance is pretty low and grass is only a small part of the considerations here anyway something you can do to help get an idea of the consistency of a deck is use a hypergeometric distribution calculator to find the exact probability of drawing SI of cards using this is actually a lot simpler than it looks you just need to enter a value for these first fall variables and the calculator will then show you the important probabilities let's say we wanted to find the probability of drawing one of these one card starters in our opening hand going first all we have to do is enter the appropriate values the population size is just the deck size so 60 the number of successes in the population is just the number of one card starters that we have in this deck so 14 the sample size is the size of our opening hand which is five and then the number of successes in the sample is how many of these starters we are interested in drawing which in this case is just one pressing calculate the calculator then shows these four probabilities the most important of which is this last one which is the probability of drawing one or more these starter cards in our opening hand these other numbers can be useful too but generally when you're using this for Yu-Gi-Oh it's the last number that you're going to be most interested so the probability of drawing at least one of these one card stats is in an open hand is about 0.75 or 75% which is three in full games this is actually a pretty good chance considering that it's only including the one card combo status you also have these other engine cars that can create two card combos but the math behind that calculation is actually a little bit more complicated so I'll just tell you that the overall probability of technically opening a playable hand is about 92% and if you can't follow this kind of math then you can also just prove it by checking a bunch of different hands over and over and seeing whether or not you're able to play we can also do this same hyp geometric calculated process for our bricks the worst bricks in the stack would be these eight cards even though some of these are better drawers than others they're all on average pretty bad there are also other cards that commonly contribute to Bricks Like albar and your non-engine cards however it's these eight that stand out to me as the cards you almost always prefer not to draw so putting these values into the hyper geometric calculator we get a probability of drawing one or more bricks in your opening hand of about .52 or 52% which is about one in two games you can also see that the chance of drawing exactly one brick is about 40% you might find a surprising to see that just over half of this deck's opening hands would have a brick in them however it's important to keep in mind that drawing one break doesn't automatically mean your hand is bad branded is easily capable of playing with those other four cards and as I mentioned minute ago some of these breaks are better drawers than others in certain situations retribution for example is actually a good draw since any play that includes discarding a card actually becomes stronger when you discard a card with a graveyard effect like retri most branded combos actually do involve discarding one card whether that's with lellan or because your starter card requires a disc card like opening or keep in addition branded often cares a lot about having a discard available in your hand for the apart time so you can summon ALB as a quick effect and then use its effect to fuse it's for these reasons that opening one of these bricks is usually not a big deal at all as you can just use that brick as a discard therefore this 52% number doesn't actually mean that much instead what I think is a better number to calculate is the probability of drawing two or more breaks in the opening hand not just one you could calculate this by entering new values into the calculator but the probability of drawing more than one break is actually shown already in this second to bottom box the probability of drawing two or more bricks is not. 13 or 133% which is about 1 in eight games drawing two or more bricks is where it starts to get suspicious for Branded as the remaining three cars in your hand are going to have to do some heavy lifting and you're likely going to be discarding one of the bricks meaning that the other one actually stays at your hand providing nothing and then we can also do this to find out the probability you're drawing your non-engine cards as well when I say non-eng engine cards what it refers to two Ora cards were going second so Hand traps and board Breakers which would be these I'm including first as one of andon engine cards since in practice thust can be as powerful as a board breaker when you go second even though you normally use it to search for engine cards like grass or gred Fusion it really does substitute for a board breaker since Brand's engine is very good at breaking boards to begin with this is actually one of the reasons why I don't think that playing talents as a Target is something you have to do in branded it's often just as effective to search for an extender that's not to say talents is necessarily bad in branded just that it's definitely not necessary so for this calculation SWS could be treated as a non-engine card also while magnate and Saria are kind of like hand traps for certain matchups I thought it made more sense to not include them since they aren't hand traps against every day especially some of the more relevant ones right now like snake eye and tempai so after putting in the values we can see that the chance of drawing one or more non-engine cards is about 0.71 or 71% which is just a little bit under three and four games now since we're talking about non-engine cards here and non-engine cards are most important for going second it makes more sense to actually factor in the extra draw that you have one second while the free copies of Maxi and the free copies of Ash bosom will Stony to be hard drawn in your opening hand the free copies of first and the free copies of super poly as well as the one imp pem are actually useful as board Breakers if you draw them as your sixth card the way to compensate for this extra draw for turn is with this calculation the population size is now 55 as you've already drew a five guard opening hand and the number of successes in the population is seven which is the number of useful non-engine top decks the reason why the population has seven successes in it is because we are assuming for this calculation that our opening five cards didn't contain any non- engine at all the sample size this time is just one since we are only interested in our top deck and the number of successes in the sample is still going to be one this produces a probability of top decking a useful non-engine card of 0.127 or 12.7% this probability then needs to be multiplied by the probability of not drawing any non- engine in the five guard opening hand and we can find that by just doing one minus our previous result of 71% which comes to 29% this ends up at about 0.036 or 3.6% so then adding this value to the 71% we found earlier brings the total probability of seeing one useful non-engine card when you go second or more to about 75% which is again about three and four games the non-engine cards in this list are one of the things about it that is subject to change the most since different formats require different non-engine so this probability is in a way the least important one as it would likely change from format to format in fact none of these probabilities are really anything super special as you can make a lot of changes to a brand of deck Without Really affecting its playability so these exact values aren't that important what's important is that they demonstrate a rough idea about what the probabilities are and it's going to help us compare to some other list as well so now let's look at a faulty card version of branded the differences between this build and the 60 card version can be seen right away first of all this version is not plain grass which makes sense since grass does nothing in a 40 card deck and you can also see that we're only playing two thrust instead of three thrust doesn't have the option of searching for grass when going second in this build so it makes sense that there would be slightly less priority on although it is still good to play because it can search for Branded Fusion or any of your other targets and of course going first it is still able to set duplication playing two thrust also helps with reducing the chance of breaking since it's a hard once per turn and first is not a starter on its own and it relies on your opponent to make it live this is especially relevant when you go first since your opponent won't always have a hand trap therefore playing just two a eliminates some of the chances of breaking old trust you can also see that we're playing a copy of triple tactics talents this is that to be a first Target going second I said previously that the 60 card version doesn't need to play talents because it has enough engine targets with thrust that can act as blard Breakers however in the 40 card version I think it makes sense to play talents since grass is no longer an option and it's also more likely that you have drawn your other targets as well you see that we're playing Alba here as a two of rather than a three of this is because the for carut deck is more consistent and we're trying to minimiz as our chances of drawing bad hands it does damage The Grind game of this deck and it makes using duplication sometimes a little awkward if you don't have any elbows left in the deck but it is still perfectly manageable if you manage the resources right as you can still recycle them with luil you can see that there's only one copy of shrouded this is because the Cod can actually kind of bricky if you draw too many copies since it is a hard ones per 10 thrwing shrouded with shrouded is always a bad feeling and there's also last copies of High Spirits to pair with the shrouded dragon in the first place the deck is also not struggling to fill the deck with consistency cards so playing more copies of shrouded Dragon would only be replacing cards that are more important like your non-engine cards or your engine requirements you can see that this list playing two Targets for albon instead of three branded in red and branded King this is because playing more than two is too rcky for 40 card decks and playing just one would make the deck more onedimensional than it really needs to be I still think it's okay to play Just Brandon in red in a 40 card deck because the chances of drawing it are not that high and most of the time you're just going to experience setting branded and bread from your deck and everything's going to be just fine Brandon and red is generally the best tken and then Brandon and red is being played in this list instead of of banishment because provides a very particular use that banishment can't do like negating board Breakers or outing Pusa although in general you could of course still play banishment and once light and darkness dragon is released you're definitely going to want to play the banishment there's only one copy of heper in here this is because the priority starters are the one card combos and the fusion deployment and there's a lot less dark dragons in the deck that you have to pair with the heps in the first place it's still worth playing one copy so that you can search for it in certain combo lines and it also allows you to send it to the graay guard in the end phase to get a free discard back to your hand playing around Ash is often done by using High Spirits and if you do draw a really good P for the High Spirits like sarinia then searching for it with ala is sometimes the better play even if you're not planning on playing around Ash eventually you can see there's only the minimum best yals and only one retribution as well as all the best one card starters and they for non-engine there's just super poly and Max C in forar branded you generally only have room for about six to seven non-engine Cs and that means that you want to try and play the non-engine cards that have the most impact like Maxi and super P playing cards like talents and thrust can help add additional non-engine without really taking away from the amount of engine cards since these cards can double up as either engine or non-engine so now what we can do is compare this list to the 60 card version using the hyp GMC calculator starting with the static cards you can see that there are 10 one card combos in this list so putting the values into a calculator we can see that the probability of drawing one or more of these one cut stars is about .78 or 78% this is only a little bit higher than the probability of opening a one card combo in the 60 card deck and if we then factor in the two card combos to find the overall chance of seeing any player hand the number now becomes around 95% now let's do the same thing for the bricks the bricks in this deck would be these four cars again other cars can also be pricky sometimes like branded in white and branded lost however we are only considering the worst bricks for this calculation if you're wondering how branded King can be a brick but duplication isn't it's because duplication almost always becomes live once you stop playing even if you think get handre and so it C contributes to your engine since it can create follow whereas brand of king is dead more often since it required you to have gotten to an albas Fusion specifically so putting the values into the calculator we get a probability of drawing one or more bricks or .43 or 43% if we then apply the same logic we did last time and say that we are more interested in the probability of drawing two or more bricks we can instead take this value which is 0.07 or 7% that's about one in 14 games that this deck will draw more than one brick and now we can do the same for the non-engine cards as well these are our only non-engine cards but since super pelly thrust and talents of Bol Breakers and could be drawn as the sixth card the calculation needs to account for this calculation for this is going to start with the probability of drawing any non-engine card in the opening Five Card hand putting values into the hyp geometric calculator shows this to be .74 OR7 4% from this we can find a probability of not drawing a non-engine card in the opening hand by doing 1 minus not. 74 which gives 0.26 this value then needs to be multiplied by the probability of drawing exactly super poly thrust or towen as your sixth card for turn which is about 0.14 or 14% to give a value of .0 364 or 3.6% you can then add this probability to our first probability to give an overall probability of drawing a non-engine card going second in this list of about 78% so looking at the differences between the probabilities for the 60 card debt and the probabilities for the 40 card debt we can see that there's actually not too much of a difference across the board in each criteria both deck versions score roughly the same with a 40 card version being just a little bit better all around the implication of this is that when it comes to things like drawing starters drawing non-eng engine and drawing bricks both decks actually do a very similar job as long as that built similarly to the examples that I shown and so the real deciding factor for which deck you should play is in the other strengths and weaknesses not in the probabilities the 60 card version has the advantages of being able to use grass play more options in the deck and draw duplicates in his hand less often and in comparison the 40 card version can really only include an advantage that it draws Max SE outs like ash Blossom and Cold by the grave more often in my opinion the six0 card version is just Stronger All Around and really doesn't suffer from being less consistent the way a lot of players seem to think it does something else you can see from these probabilities is that Randon as a whole is not an inconsistent deck but chance of this opening hands are technically playable is actually pretty high even when compared to other consistent decks where sty was at full power for example its chance of opening a starter was about 92% the exact same as branded instead I think branded gets mistaken for being an inconsistent deck due to a number of other factors like the fact that it often draws its bricks the fact that it's often easily Stu with hand traps and the fact that inexperienced braded players often build the deck and play the hands incorrectly the key to building branded correctly in my opinion is just about balancing the amount of bricks starters and non-engine in your deck so that the probabilities stay roughly similar to these ones there's a lot of different ways to play branded with a lot of specific car choices varying from player to player and format to format and by just how players regularly change their mind about what they want to play so the exact probabilities are going to be different for every list however keeping them close to these numbers is what I think you should aim for when building a branded deck I think that cards is the best as do most of the top branded players but in reality the deck is still perectly fine if you build it correctly any deck size is honestly completely fine so in lights of this another way to play branded is with a number of cards between 40 and 60 this list is exactly 50 cards but you can also play Anywhere down to 40 or up to 60 as well as long as you're putting the appropriate amount of bricks starters and non-engine in your deck your deck is going to be just fine the main idea behind playing a 50 card deck would be to try and benefit more from your outs to Maxi and Ash Blossom like called by the Grave by drawing them more often while also still benefiting from grass you can see that this list is still playing grass even though it's not 60 curs this works because the majority of the times where you're going to be activating grass you're going to be going second since as I pointed out before three copies of thrust makes you four times more likely to have grass door in second compared to they going first this means that your opponents will have often emptied a lot of their deck during their turn one combo so your grass is still now going to be able to Mill a good amount of cards you can see that because there's a higher amount of cards total the amount of starches in this list and non-engine cards is slightly higher than in the 40 card deck but lower than in the 60 card deck which makes perfect sense we're also playing an extra break in the form of Maximus this is a very valid way of playing branded and it's something that player who is potentially the best branded player in the game right now really likes to do here is a branded deck played by fetty at the lest World Championships you can see that this list follows a lot of the same theory that we've talked about with my lists it's not a perfect match but the ideas are kind of visible it's 60 cars with grass and it's playing extra starters like keeper and Thea it's also playing a lot of non-engine and you can see that it's willing to play some more bricks like the requium and the second copy of Retribution now at the time of World's opening and gold sophus were limited so that's why there's only one copy of each I'm sure that this list as well as every other branded player at Worlds would have chosen to play those cards if they could when it comes to this list I think that this deck is playing slightly more non-engine than it needs to if we count first again as a non-engine code then this list is playing 19 non-engine cuts which is quite a bit more than what most lists normally play and more than what I think is needed this list could also fit in slightly more bricks if it wanted to like branded sword or a second target for albian you'll also notice that there's no cold by the grave in this list although I'm pretty sure the reason for this is due to the world's format having a shared Cod pool if you can't play C by and branded then you definitely always will this is another list from Worlds this time from matus BR you can see that this list is also a 60 card grass deck and is playing a lot of non-engine just like the previous list is playing three branded lost which is an idea they got from abah hammud chaos neist is also in this list which is a great choice for worlds considering the amount of fing snake ey that was there and you can also see that this list has one copy of Nibiru which is a nice insurance policy you can play against Maxi branded is known for not playing a whole lot of hand traps so often players will try to odk you when you max see them which means you can punish them a lot by eventually drawing into one copy of niran triple cesia is a choice that makes more sense alongside the triple branded lost as it becomes a better starter than just cesia on her own and plays around hand drops better as well this is another list from Worlds this one is not quite a 60 card deck showing that you don't necessarily have to go all the way to 60 to benefit from grass this list is playing Jan which is now banned so I won't really say anything much about it other than that I will go into detail on The Floodgate locks during The Floodgate section of the video you can see that this list chooses to play two copies of mcua which is justified by the two copies of a of Darkness a l of darkness is a car that is hard to get right in branded I personally think it's never really that good but it does make the most sense in a list like this that is playing mostly board Breakers as it's non-eng engine like evenly matched and droplets there's even a change of hot in here as well which is an interesting Target for thrust there are a total of seven bricks in this 56 card deck alongside a lot of non-engine cids that aren't great to draw going first so I'd expect to be breaking a lot with this build when I go first I personally prefer to cut the alongside one of the mcua in order to make a smaller deck overall this next list is from Bogan you can see that this is an example of a 50 card version of branded that is still making use of grass and it has a total of six bricks over roll which is about the same number as my 50 card version for Mia this list is also playing a a pure board breaker approach rather than playing any hand traps which similar to the previous list justifies the alert of Darkness a little bit you can see that there's also all three copies of keeper as well as all three copies of shrouded Dragon suggesting that this player was focused on having a lot of consistency here's another deck from Wells that is playing grass with less than 60 cards this one is from superu and you can again see a very similar approach of playing a lot of board Breakers or Breakers were choice that these players May because they thought that the format at the time was best counted by Bo Breakers instead of HS it's also going to have a lot to do with the shared card pool at the world championships this next list is from TI s this list is the one that I felt was the most interesting when I saw it as it's playing a lot of cars that the other decks didn't really touch like the golden sword soul and fairy tale snow it's also deep on the bals playing drw's one and all fre de Bellion which makes sense given that it's even playing brand of Beast this p nutus in here and you can see to there's three targets for albon if you include the Branded Beast overall there's a lot of bricks in this deck and in my opinion there is actually too many bricks at WS itself we did actually see T us brick a few times going first with no play at all I think I would improve this list by cutting one or two of the bricks and going ahead and playing the extra Star as the Branded is now able to play there's this list as well which is another grass deck that is really deep on bals it's playing bald Drake and regained although no branded Beast this m is playing three aler of darkness which I don't really like even though there's a lot of bar Breakers this list is still going to have some trouble with not opening a good dark monster to vanish there dark hole which is interesting and there's also two copies of albz this is the only list we've seen from Wilds that is playing two copies of albz which I think is a mistake given that it is a 60 card deck I think there's no reason to be playing just two you'll also notice that none of these lists have been playing 40 cards as I said earlier I think that most of the top branded players understand that the 60 card version just has a slight Advantage given that it has access to grass and then this is the last branded deck from Worlds this one was by far the most striking to me since there's a lot of choices here that are not standard and regular branded to start with there's the patchwork engine which is not something that normally gets played anymore is o add lium as a gr grenal Target as well as de this and requin there's triple tragedy in here to work with the alert of darkness which is strange considering that mcua is generally the car that is more favorable to play multiple of if you want to work with a lure of Darkness as tragedy really only has one option for how to use it whereas mcua has quite a lot it also benefits from branded sword as a banish mcua can be added back whereas a banish tragedy does nothing I think the idea is that this list is trying to draw a tragedy so that it can search for ad libitum for free you'll also notice that there's triple lost in here as one as two copies of branded and red there's even two copies of Kit a card that is almost always played at one since it is the worst one card combo that you can play in branded this looks to me like it's similar to Old School branded which is closer to a desp chimero turbo deck there's also Magnum the reliever in the extra deck as well which is a car that works better when you playing a patchwork engine as it's a pretty good card to hard make on your turn with the polymerization to me this list makes sense as a way of better countering low power engine decks like voiceless voice and Labyrinth to me this list is co I don't think it's optimal but obviously none of the world's players are bad and this list definitely looks fun to play so now that we've gone over every card in detail as well as a lot of different deck lists and the theory and math behind them I think it's finally time to show the combos I'm going to be showing the combos one by one from this spreadsheet that I made and I'll provide some explanation as we go about things like why certain choices are made how to best use the end board and things like that I'll also make it clear when the combo contains a choice so you can maybe pick which option you prefer for yourself the spreadsheet is available in the description by the way so you can look through it by yourself although I will say the video is going to be significantly prettier and more informative as well anyway let's now move on to the combos [Music] come sh for sh for for [Music] sh is I [Music] okay so this is the sprie that I have of the Branded combos you can see that it's quite big we have a lot of combos here we have if I scroll down to the bottom yeah we have up to 2011 comos but there's actually even more because some of the years like this 48.1 and 1482 or added in afterwards and I didn't want to rumber the combos so there's actually even more than 2011 combos here there's maybe like 210 220 different combos which is more than you'll ever need it's more than you need to memorize you definitely don't need to memorize all of these combos but but I thought I would map them out just because I can so the way this is set out is you have the combos here the Cs that you need in hand you have the end board here and then you have a replay here there's also some notes the notes just mention some simple things about the combo that you might need to be reminded of like this combo for example reminding you that it requires playing branded sword and there's this one actually uses the normal sunone that this one telling you that uses the H of hand so yeah these are a little bit a little bit of helpful advice for the combo and then there's the replay here and it shows you how to do it so what I'm going to do is go through all of these one by one and show off the combo starting with the most basic one which is Al one got combo so if we open up this DB replay okay so we can see we have volcanic rat the volcanic rat is just my vanilla master of chice this just represents a random discard obviously in a real game you don't have a completely useless discard but you can have you can have some that do nothing like like Maxi or as for example so that's basically what these represent but in reality a lot of the time they're going to be engine cards so they could have relevance in the graveyard but just for for the sake of the combo we're going to use volcanic rats so that's what these were present when you see them in the rest of the comos so this combo starts out pretty normal does that feel what you'd expect this is why we need the death card cuz we're going to use rebellion and we're going to make marade so the reason why we bring out branded lost the Rebellion is because you're not playing any other Target in your deck at least you should be there aren't really any other Target toward playing and also when we not can trigger this this time but we are going to trigger it on the opponent's time so it's important to bring out the Branded loss then we're going to get albon and we're going to set banishment the reason to set banishment is because we are playing with light and darkness dring so what we're going to do is use the banishment on the opponent's turn FS the albon and the lellan into lightning Darkness dragon and that's going to be free on the negates for our opponent's time we also have mirade branded lasus set from aara and that's a pretty strong board that's TR Gat plus marij plus mccu and it's five destructions in total it's pretty good but this is this St this is the basic one gut combo CU it do the end of the combo so we can close this up come back to the spreadsheet and yeah we now we can move on to the next one so for the next one we have fullish plus one discard you can see this is the exact same end board which makes sense we know that foolish burial is just another star for for your deck and just searches for Al is just another copy so all it's going to be is that we start by sending tragedy which searches for the Ali and then from this point it's clearly just the same combo so I'll show it again you go for albon into the Bellion into mirid and then the same is also true for for goldar we know that gold sarcophagus is just again another copy of Alaba except instead of sending tragedy to the graveyard you're going to banish it yeah so we manage it with the gold sock it triggers such as the aloa and now it's the exact same combo again okay so the next one is keeper of dragon magic plus two discards so this one is again the exact same end board because it is the exact scene combo but it requires one extra discard because as you'll see keeper requires a discard right in order to search so we still need one for the Bellion but we also need one for teer which is why we have two rats this time so there is nothing special you can do with keeper second effect in this one cut combo line you don't get to do anything special with this effect but there are combos that you'll see later where we do get to do something special with this effect and then there's also opening opening is also the exact same combo you can do the exact same line so I'll show it off like this opening one r on two R we need two again because opening itself requires a discard we summon the AL there in the standby phase but it should really be the Jal phase because we're trying to play around Dro and also baa but other than that it's the exact same line ending with the exact same board by the way the reason for the placement of the cards and the positions it's playing around me knits but you don't actually need to play around me knits the more important thing to play around is just anima zones so you're just trying to not put any monsters in this zone or this Zone at least as you'll see for some of the bigger combos later you can't always avoid that so you just want to put your worst monsters in these sounds so for now because we can avoid it we are avoiding it and then we have combo six branded Fusion plus one disc cut you can see this combo is actually a little bit different because instead of starting with alra we have the Branded Fusion itself it's still a pretty simple combo though as you'll see so this time I got a same tragedy and tragedy is going to trigger and that's going to search for a normal sermon rebellion's going to resolve and make marriage a like usual and now we can have alabe search for Branded in red the reason we're going to search branded in red is so that we can make Chimera on the opponent's T right we have the tragedy as the target we have the mirade banish and we had two monsters on the board so with the tragedy that's three monsters for chimero that's a pop two and a marij bage that's two disruptions it's not amazing but it's also not terrible we know that this can be pretty good it searches a lot of followup because it draws a card and you get a search with tragedy n Jade also has follow up inherently with its graveyard effect uh the graveyard effect to the m that you send and mean so it this can be good but it is pretty simple then we have kit kit is also the same combo as the other the other one card Alaba combos since kit is basically the same kind of starter since you have to put a card back for Kit that's why we need the second discard I'm calling it a discard even though you put it back to the bottom of the deck it's basically the same thing from here is the the exact same line there is no way to go for rnm here instead of lellan into marade even though kit you can use it to someone renr without any of the combo pieces to work with it's not that good of a play so you should just make marij Jade instead and then like usual we have the Branded lost and the banishment and then the next combo we have is alab plus one disc again but this time it's a different version you see this combo ends on a very different board this is an interesting line I think this is important to know it's important to know because not a lot of people hat and go for this in my experience so it starts out the scene you have alabar plus your discard and you're actually going to go for pretty much the exact same line you're going to go for albon into the belly and into miror Jade you're then going to bring out the Branded lost and then you going to activate the marage this is the difference from the previous one card combo withouta you can actually choose to activate the miror Jade and send Titanic Blood so that in the end phase you can trigger the Titanic GL and you're going to send cesia then you're going to add the cesia back to to your hand and it's important that you did both of these effects before triggering your albon because you're can to trigger albon next need to add High Spirits I guess it doesn't really matter if you do them in which order but you want to make sure that your Titanic CL resolves and your cesia results before you commit to adding High Spirits but here what you're going to do is activate the High Spirits you will need to Tuggle on to do this in the end phase you're going to reveal a cesia and you're going to send gr Grell to the graveyard that's going to let you search for alz and then that will trigger the quen to revive the Cartesian so now this end board what you have is a Gran quinel in the graveyard which can summon something like citis or a second Quin if you're playing it maybe Lulu W um but the bul of your endboard is your cesia and Al so on the opponent's tank you can use cesia fuse the albas into maybe albon or the Bellion the Bellion is pretty nice you can use the miror Jade from the field and that means that your Quin can then revive the miror Jade back to your field remember this miror Jade was used so it is not a disruption on its own but just by having it around it it is a disruption because once you get rid of it you can revive it with quen so that's pretty good and when you do fuse with a cesia you get branded lost again to search for mcua so this is a stronger end worde than the other one card combos it's just less reliable because you're relying on cesia to resolve you without cesia you have not a lot um if your patisia gets negated with something like impal or chocolats then you're pretty much relaying on Grand grol on its own to do the heavy lifting right and if you only have kitis as a Target and not a second quam You' been a struggle to do much from that position but this is a stronger board this is a higher ceiling so it's worth knowing about this and yeah as you can see I said in the notes you could also do this for any of the other combos starting with any of your other one cut stance it's exactly the same thing then we have branded Fusion plus two discards this is a very interesting combo this is one that I don't see a lot of people um doing at least not in mle so what this com does is actually perform a requium luck or a gimmick puppet luck with just brand Deion so the way it goes is like this you're going to go for albon oh sorry Rebellion plus tragedy exactly like before you're going to make the miror aid and you're going to normal summon the AL so in the previous convo what we did was search for Brandon in red and set branded in red and then have Mar Jade plus branded in red as instructions but what we learned from the last combo we just looked at is that you can actually sometimes use the marriage Aid on your 10 to create a better end port and that's exactly what we're going to do this time so we're going to search for opening I'm asking to letter us summon a quen this is why we need the second discard cl's going to activate and send cesia now we can actually activate the marriage Aid sending albon albon is important to get because we haven't been so albon yet and we're going to banish El and now we get the trigger the quen we're going to activate cesia and Fe away the mate this is important because we want to get rid of this irade that's already used this effect so that we can bring it back to the field some other time or what use it so we can't revive it right away but we do put it into the graveyard and it is a target for CRI later on so we're going to send thean CL the reason we sent the tan CL is because we even though we have quam already we actually needed to effect we're going to use it to search for an albz so we have branded in red plus albz and we're actually going to leave the cesia in the gr and it's important that you do that because we're going to need it in there so sometime on the opponent's turn we're going to be able to flip the Branded in red we're going to Target the tragedy and then we're going to banish the alas from our hand not the tragedy that we just added back but the albz as well as the Grand greno and that's going to summon sanctify it now we can trigger the Quin this is why we needed the cesia in the graveyard now cesia can used with the tragedy for another grand granel which can send a Floodgate right previously this was ging puppet but now this is requium we get a search and we now have sanctifier which can revive the requium to our opponent's board and probably the marade but you could also revive CS if it was more appropriate to your own field and this is pretty good this is one branded Fusion this mer Jade is now live you have a requium luck and you have grand grenal available here you do need to be playing two which not every deck does and you also need to be playing a luck for this to be important but this is a stronger board than what you've made before so we're activating marriage Aid in your 10 one you got to do quite a bit more anyway so moving on to the next one we have another one cut combo this is Nadia servant this is what you can do with Nadia Serv by itself so we're going to send Gora which draws a coton and I'm going to add a wrap to my hand just to indicate that I drew one card so we're going to go for this play again which is the High Spirits in the end phase you do need to toggle on for this to work you can as send the cesia and the gr gal and get the alz and then revive the cesia with qu this is an important line to know since it makes High Spirits and media and also drawing cards like cesia and quen directly it makes them a lot stronger if you know how to do these lines so keep in mind you might be able to do this um and with the DS Sun specifically you have this what this endboard has is a fusion you have cesia to Fusion elz you can make albon into Mar you have plenty of targets to banish from the graveyard into marij you don't need to discard don't need to go through the Bellion grinold can summon a second Quin or a gous and you also have quen trigger again so you fuse with cesia and albz into albon what you can do is trigger a quen to revive the albas and then just use the albon to banish this albon and this Titanic lead for furious dragon that way you can use the Elbas for its actual effect this C whatever you drew with the Gora on time one have us to AER it so you have quite a lot here providing that it all resolves so there's also other versions of the combo fadia servant you can see we have a version two and a version three here so if we take a look at these this is a slightly different version of how you can do the one card combo again we're going to draw a card so I'm going to add wrap to my hand keep in mind by the way that even if you draw a really good starter or extender you are still locked after using the ds7 you're locked out of the ack so even drawing something like an Alo b or branded Fusion it's unfortunate but it doesn't help you that much aliber is still okay because you can still know some on it but you can't know for a full combo anyway cuz you are now locked out of the extra neck but the the draw is still good and you saw in the last combo we used it as a disc card for albas and you can draw like a non-engine card here that would be really good or I could be steel something like that so this line sends the exact same two monsters with Maximus and we're going to trigger it in the exact same way but this time instead of adding High Spirits to our hand we are just going to set ration and we're also going to send albas with quen instead of cesia the reason for this is because we want to just revive the elz we want to just revive this when our opponent someone's from the extra deck we're going to discard this card and we're going to fuse into a marriage a at any time we have a summon negation right this this is a negate we can return the albon and the Titanic lad back to the deck so I guess said match ups this could be stronger technically it is a little bit weaker because it's a lot better to play where like fusing and cesia and something marij things like that but this is still a viable option sometimes it's more important to have retribution you could probably get away with doing this combo on the Maxi whereas the previous combo would be pretty ban to Mexi cuz you're going to give him three draws so things like that are what you can consider when deciding between which combo to go for there's also version three here here which is again another alternative and this one looks like this again we're sending the same two monsters and we're sending albad this time we're setting Brandon red so the reason a branded in breed would be if you have other monsters in your hand in particular a dark monster if you have a dark monster in your hand for Elbas to fuse with and the Brandon in red could be better even without but not oner this is technically playable because you can make Chimera with the quen the Maximus and the albas from your grhe head but you probably don't want to go for this combo unless you have a dark master to fuse with so that you can make a very easy marriage Aid and then we have the last n Serv combo here which is what you can do with n servant without playing Maximus so I've said in this video that I think you should play Maximus but you don't have to and a lot of people don't this is what you can do on the ds7 without playing Maximus so you can see it's the same High Spirits in the end phase play that we have shown quite a few times now it has Grand ganal available it has CIA fuse into Alon qu revive the cesia or CR revive the alaz rather pretty good combo and then the last workout combo I have here is quen there's no Replay for this because quen not a Wai combo I felt like I had to point this out because for some reason I feel like people don't understand this but clim is not a one card combo which is why it's not played at three it's not a starter it's just an extender um and now we have the two cut combos these are all the alra two cut combos so here is the first one alabra plus Rebellion this combo looks like this so we're going to make renb here so this is one of the ren brm lines instead of going for albon into lellan we get to sand mcua and this is important because we canot vanish it with the pisal to trigger it's effect to search whenever you can do this it's usually pretty good although it generally only happens when you draw a l pellion just throwing s on its own isn't enough to justify sending mercuria in my opinion you need the lootellan in order to access rended lost so you going to activate your marriage and it's important that you then chain your R Brom to negate it by negating it you're allowing it to be used again on the next turn and the reason why you want to do this now in the end phase instead of drawing a branded L window to make it safe from your opponent interacting with it is so that you can trigger the CL the whole point of doing this is so you can trigger the Clum right now to revive the cesia you now get use albon and you get to set your branded in red setting branded in red because because Alan is not a target for banishment right which means we C fuse into light and darkness Dragon amula don't have lilion on the board in fact this is the reason why we bounced a lilion to our hand it said that we have a discard for albas but also because we're not going to be making light and darkness dragon with banishment so we don't need it on the board instead we're going to set branded in red and we have the aler in here we also have the alz probably better to go for alas eventually but you can also go for Chimera at any time with the El right and that's that's your game plan you don't have the means to revive elz on a ren brm ballet because the ren brm is on the field so until this go to the graveyard you can use it to revive your elbows but you can still revive it with quen um so you might want to consider doing that before slipping the Branded in Red If You Can taret the elas but it it's up to you and it really depends on what the opponent does how you're going to use this board you have a lot of disruptions in total you have like a miror jade which is in a gate or It's A disruption you have rrum which is in a gate albas can be revived with Quan you have branded and red into Chimera you can search for another mcua if you're playing it um if you are only playing one though then remember that it is banished so again this is a strongboard this is my personal favorite combo and all of branded I love this combo um and I will always try to go for this if I end get a chance so this is a good this is a good Bard and then we have Alaba plus sarinia this combo looks like this as I said you don't usually go for wind lines unless you hide draw the Bellion itself so Iaria is not going to go for rain bur instead we're going to get high birs so the reason to access branded Fusion this way instead of just searching it directly with the Ali is because you get Titanic lad in the graveyard which is good you want this in the grave there's no reason to not go for it like this you get a free drill and you also get Titanic lad in the grid that which makes this end board a lot stronger from here it's a pretty basic combo just like before you're going to summon miror Jade as usual bring out branded lost and then go to the end phase where you going to summon your Quin send a second copy of Alas and a set banish you have alas in the graveyard so you can now send Ren brm with Mary Jade and revive it remember that you do have other cards in your hand we're not showing the rest of the the hand so you do have discards for alz and you wasn't a have Quin plus management to make light and darkness Dragon branded lost to s from mcua and mirror Jade to Bish um and then we have Alaba plus elas this combo has quite a lot of variations you can see we have quite a few different options here um but the pure one with just Alaba and alas without using any of the discards looks like this you can see that yet again it is just another basic one cut combo except this time we have albas in the grave yet getting albas into the graveyard is always a good thing it's always the like a checkpoint that you want to check off your checklist when building your Brandon and board if you have albas in the in the graveyard it's just better than not having it because it makes your marage a really strong so this is the walk guard combo but with ALB and the g gu all you can do here is use the marade just like we showed before in the one card combo you could banish you Lu Bellion to get access to Quan and then instead of setting banishment you can go for the High Spirits play I mean phase that is an option although I don't recommend that in this line because one of the main benefits of that line is that you get albis into the graveyard and in this combo you already have it so you should probably go for this line if you have this really this this is just showcasing that if you draw alad AO you can just use it as a disc kind for your regular one card line and then it's it's beneficial in the gravat that being said there there are other ways to use it and that's what this combo was going to show you now this is a verday line where you can actually play around [Music] [Music] Ash so you can see instead of getting branded Fusion we're going to get Kit as um we're going to get High Spirits into kit kit can then special summon itself so we have albon in the graveyard and that's going to trigger the Setra branded lost which is why we need this second discard because kit has to put a card back into the deck so from here we have two monsters and we have not yet locked ourselves into fusions which is why we're going to be able to go for Verte and play around Ash like this so this trick is branded last and we're going to search for shrouded Dragon here the reason to search for shrouded dragon is because you have albas in the gget which means on the opponent's turn you're going to send rram you're going to fuse with albas and then you're going to trigger branded loss again right and this is going to let you search from aurer on your turn there's no reason to get it right away you might as well get albon so that you can draw a card right we're going to send the retribution and we're going to search for oh we Sear for the rant but this is a random draw so now you have followup you have retribution and the Branded Fusion you have RR into alz and you also have miror bandage on its own if you do get to fuse then you also get a monster in the gate it's a pretty strong board and then let's not forget we also get Alon in the graveyard to set branded at red and we actually have a second copy and ALB here if you want to use it for a branded in red early and then we still have the means to revive one with Ren BR later on so this is pretty good this is one way you can play around Ash and then there's potion two here which is very similar but instead of searing for Branded L with kit we're actually going to search for Branded in red there are other options you can search for obviously anything you didn't need the Branded lost it wasn't a crucial part of the combo so L show one option that you can do when seing for something else so just like usual you're going to use High Spirits you're going to get Kit you're going to summon it we're going for bir so that we can play around uh the ash but here we have branded in red instead of branded lost so instead of going for the draw one on Allan and the mura on our repon 10 we are instead trading that for Branded and red and the way you can use this branded and red is like this what you can do is you can activate the Verte sending the Branded Fusion as cost because you hav't albas in the graveyard now already you can actually use the Branded in red in response to add back the elbow and then summon Mar you can do this because bir hasn't yet resolved so even though it says you can't special summon that's not going to matter we're going to do this first it's chanic two and then it's chanic one birth is going to resolve and it's going to summon San F and we're going to send quen here quen is important because in the end phase wouldn't trigger Alon and we're going to set banishment right so banishment can Target the Quin you can't Target the albon but you can Target the Ala or the quen and quen is a bit better than Alaba because this is actually relevant you can use this to have some kind of effect you can also revive it with sanctifier potentially although I think You' be trying to resolve sanctifier by summoning alas that's probably the best way to play this so on the opponent turn you can use merid banish you can use sanctifier to revive albz and you can use banishment to revive quen and then there's one more option version three which is pretty much exactly the same thing again another Verte line but we have another option This Time by searching a different card with kit so it starts out the same like normal and we're going to search for Branded and white this time so the Branded and white is actually really interesting we can't chain this to uh to Verte but what we can do is use it before activating the verting so we're going to activate the Branded in white now and that's going to let us banish the kit which is a beast and the Elbas for run so now we can do a similar play to what we saw a few combos ago then some mirate with the Verte and then we're going to activate it and negate it with r now what we actually s here is burand which is not an elas Fusion you are likely to be playing but if you you are playing it this is a combo that you can do it's going to activate in the end phase and it's in a search for mcua so this card this card lets you add a tri Brigade it also be special someone Al like usual um but this is how you can get Sam mirade Ren BR plus mcua and then also get the trigger albon for Branded in red you have one target but also a second target you have renr with in negate and balce you have the miror Jade which can still activate even though it activated its effect already because it was negated by by Ren Brum we can use it again and then we have the mcua itself so this is a pretty strong end board um probably not the one you're going to go for though because you're not going to be playing brick Grand realistically and then lastly there is this other combo which is a plus albas but not respecting Ash so this time we're not going to go for a ver line and this is going to show you what you can do without playing around Ash so this time we require two discards and the reason is because we're still going to get Heist birds and we're still going to need to put one back with kit but we're also going to need to put back the other one with or discard the other one with Rebellion so the combo is going to go like this so this time we're going to get branded Fusion and the reason why it's worth again like I said before the reason why it's worth going through the High Spirits instead of searching for the Branded Fusion directly is so that you can get Titanic leing to the Grave yet it's worth it these extra discards are not worth as much as the Quinn revives for you right so you really want to go out of your way to get Titanic cling the graveyard from here it's a pretty basic combo we're going to go into near Jade and we're going to chieve it we're going to summon out we're going to bring the brand of lost onto the field so this position you've seen a million times and from here we're going to go to the end phase activate the Titanic glass summon at the quen and we're going to send cesia because we already have an alaz here so there's no reason to send another one we can just send cesia to get add into rotation and we can actually add it back if we want it's going to be a Target uh a discard for our albow yeah there we go are we also set the banishment because we're going to have Albi on which we can revive we have lellan on on the field so that's lighten B must Dragon so this blood is pretty strong we have marade we have Co revive we have mura from branded lost we have three onni negates with brand banishment Alis in the graveyard pretty good it's pretty good okay next we have Alaba plus deployment this is one of your standard combos this one is very well known I think it is Alaba plus deployment plus one desk card so it's going to start with deployment you're going to start with cesia because you want to play around imper MOA on aler so you can protect yourself for Branded Fusion it does play a little bit harder into Maxi but that's fine you take it there's more veis in FN than Maxi if your opponent is playing them it also plays a little bit better around gamma as well um for the most part you should just use the deployment first in almost all of your Lines Just because the impound protection is is important and even if you do get Max seed a lot of the time you're probably going to decide that it's worth it to summon the cesia anyway because it does provide play on the opponent's Stone so this line goes for albon it's pretty much a one card combo line except at the end we're going to have cesia available so we can trigger our branded loss so the chain Le order doesn't matter for these you're just going to trigger one and then the other your opponent cart respond anyway you're going to s titanic word and you're going to search for shrouded we going to draw a wrap because it's a random card and then in the end phase we're going to summon quen that's going to send alz and we're going to set this time it's not banishment because we don't have Rebellion on the field so banishment providing Alon is less malleable we can't make light and darkness Dragon so we're going to get branded in red instead and then there's a very similar line that is almost identical except if you want to use an extra discard then you can and it ends on a slightly stronger board as you will see so this time we have two discards ending up a cesia again to protect the Ala exactly the same line and then here what we going to do is actually search for Spring's kit instead of shata dragon so in the previous line we used one less discard and then we drew an extra card with shrouded we also got to send a retribution or some followup in this combo this is going to be slightly stronger but we're going to have a lot less follow we're going to use more cards we're going to have no retribution and we're not going to have drawn a card as well we're still going to send a banic clood CU we need to quen but now we get to use kit and kit is going to let us search for banishment now we're gonna put back a card from my hand and then in the end phase we get the Quan and then we're going to set branded in Red so now we have banishment and branded in red both of which are alive we don't have light and darkness Dragon but we could theoretically get there with the Branded and red if we wanted to you can kind of always do this um because lellan is also like the fusion Rebellion is also a light dragon so we can get there we have both traps basically this is why this combo is the same as the standard Ali plus deployment combo which is a little bit better if you want to commit more into it you can make this end board instead and we're also going to get C easier back in the end phase as well and then the next combo is ala and red fusion so this is actually a pretty strong combo and it's a few different variations of this so this is going to be the first one so we're going to summon Titanic Le which something you don't do very often but it's just because it's better than Al here because it CL is a lot stronger on its own as a standalone play than then albon in the end phase so now I'm going to get lost then activate white Adam we're going to send it I'll by there the there's a specific reason why we're going to do that it's because in the end phase when we sumon a quen we're not going to send elbows we're going to send cesia and we're going to add the cesia back to our hand and then we're going to activate maraging so this is the same line that we saw before which is searching for High Spirits in the end phase you will need to toel on if you want to use this I'm going to activate it in the end phase search for another alz and then revive the cesia so we can now fuse with the cesia on our opponent's turn we can use the albas we can make we can make albon but we could also if we're playing a second Grand oneel could fuse away the marade the C eia and even if we're not playing a second Grand gr we could fuse away the mar with the elz in the hand for all the Rebellion use this card as a discard and then quam can revive back the marade so this is pretty strong this is a pretty strong way of playing it although it's not the strongest way of playing so this was aliba and Brandon fusion with one Discord and then there's an alternative version like this so this is actually just going to search for Branded King directly and then we're going to do a one card combo line which is going to end on the Mir Jade that is live with the Branded King set on the field so this one is a lot lower powered and it's definitely also not the strongest thing you can do but it is very reliable you have Mery that's lying right away you have banishment that's fly for your light and darkness dragon and you have branded King which is an neate for anything as well you have mccu in the deck with branded lost it's relatively simple and straightforward it only takes one disc card so this is an option if you don't want to rely too much on your cesia resolving in the previous line um and then there's also an option where you just got two cuts like this so this is why we need the second discard because we're actually going to use this opening as an extender so we're going to need one discard for opening and another discard for lelion so we're going to go for Alon sending the Bellion like usual and then we're going to chain opening to Alon to summon quen now the way this is sequenced is to play around Maxi as fast as possible by holding opening until now you are pretty much confirming that your opponent doesn't have Maxi most players will change Maxi to branded Fusion but sometimes when they know branded very well they will chain to albian right because they want to play around the possibility of you just summoning sanctifier with branded Fusion if the chain Maxi then you can just someone sanctify but if you hold it they can commit into something like albon all the billion then Maxi has better value and then you could chain the opening to that by activating the AL on here and then chaining opening we confirm that they don't have Maxi if they did have Maxi in response to Al and we can chain the opening anyway so now we're going to trigger the Quin to revive the cesia it's important that we used the opening in response to the albian the reason why we couldn't use it even later than is because we need a monster to be summoned from the extra deck to trigger quen's effects right we need quen on the field we needed it to resolve sending cesia and then we needed to summon marriage Aid so that clam can revive the cesia and from here it's fairly straightforward we're going to fuse into GR grel with then a tricker lost the reason to send Saria is because we've already accessed quam so there's no reason to send Titanic what we a s richan and Saria head with shrouded let you search for any spell or trap which is what we're going to do we're going to send branded King this could also be branded in red or banishment and then in the end phase we get another one so we have two traps about choosing or two spell and traps one of these could be branded and red there is not a target for Branded and red which is why I've not set it in this combo but you could not be playing branded King if you're not playing branded King then this probably wants to just be branded in red maybe second retribution or so was a bable option the reason why we haven't added B the cesia by the way is because this is our only good Target foren to revive so we're planning on Reviving cesia and then using that to continue extending and then afterwards we even have another version of this combo Al plus branded Fusion again with two discards this time we have a slightly different end board so it's the same idea we're going to search for opening we're going to go for lelion and then we're going to chain to that Alon so that we can trigger quen in just the right amount of time but also maximizing our chances of playing around Max seat so exactly the same as before send cesia someon n trick quen now we get both of these effects I'm not going to send Gora this time there isas the send Gora is because we don't need to search for a spell trap that's not our plan we're just going to draw a card and then we're going to send alas to the graveyard this is because in the previous option we did not have access to Elbas and Elbas is very strong sometimes you would rather have access to elbow in the graveyard than an additional spell or trap your spells and traps are very strong but albas is also very strong so this is the version where you choose to to send albas so that you have and we also dra draw another card here with the shrouded and then the end phase we're going to set Brandon and web this time we have branded in red because we have a target for it vanishment again not as good because we've used the way fused away Al Bellion so access to light dest dragon is not very easy with management that's why we set bur it in red now we have access to alz on the opponent's stand and again we're not going to add back at CIA but I think honestly you should add back the CIA here just add it to your hand and then discard it for alz and you revive with RRM that would be the preferred way of playing it I think so you should you should add alz or add the cut eia back to your hand here however there is this line which is what I think is the strongest Line This is alus branded fusion with only one discard so it's even better than the previous condos we just looked at except this end board is really really strong and you'll see this line is the optimal way to play it but he does Play Slightly more at hand trims so it's going to start with aliper and the reason why we summon it here is because we actually need it here so that we can play around anones as best as possible so we're going to add opening it's the exact same idea but we're going to use it now so we're playing harder into Maxi most opponents would probably chain to this because they've already normal suon and but we need the Quin on the field first because we want to send mcua uh we're going activate branded Fusion we're going to summon Titanic glad uh sorry not Titanic glad we're going to summon Alon and we're going to send cesia so the reason we send cesia is because we're going to get to luell in a different way so we're going to actually trigger quen here to revive this alz and we're going to trigger mcaro because it was banished and we're going to trigger GR we have to also summon Grand gr to the extr Zone again if we do do that we're going to run out of space so we have to summon this to the extra most as them we're search for shrouded and we're going to revive this alvas to the field and then Grand grenal sends the lellan going to use the lellan but again we're going to summon the lellan here because we want to play at animon as best we possibly can so we have have to submit here we going to bring our branded lust now we're going to draw the reason why we draw after bringing our branded lost is because there's no more the target so we don't want to draw into the Branded lost I'm we going to send branded sword branded sword is required for this combo but if you do play it it's really really strong so we're actually going to add back the cesia not the mcua cesia because we can still now special summon it and use its effect this is going to make marij that's going to trigger brand at lost now we can get Kit we have a discard available for the kit this gets branded in white put back the discard and now we're going to make Ren brm we can make Ren brm because kit is a beast we have alabas in the graveyard and on summon under the Branded loss window you're going to want to acttiv a marid and then chain Ren brms in the gate and bounce the Rebellion back to your hand it's important that you do this in the Branded lost window just in case your opponent has a response to marij Jade they can really mess you up because renr has to directly to the marij Jade and then we can search magnut because we haven't used the Bellion yet I'm going to add Elbas we already have quen so Elbas just works with that cesia here and then I'll be on sets I'll branded banishment doesn't have to be banishment or because there's no target for Branded in red yet I decided to set banishment but branded in red is also just as good next we have aliper and branded lost this combo doesn't require any disc cards so this is a pretty simple combo but it's worth noting because it doesn't ire any discutes so if you do draw a hand with a lot of codes that you want to keep this is an option it sends lellan to the graveyard because there's nothing better to send we still need to use it to put our Alon in the graveyard but other than that it's just a one card combo except we're also going to get albas into the graveyard because of the shroud of dragon that we're able to setch W with lost so it's a one C combo with albas and the gradi if you wanted to um from here you could you could use the marriage a to banish the Rebellion do to do the same line where you send Titanic lab to the graveyard summon quen and then use heers in the end phase but honestly this is this is fine you have the the last search you have the marade banish you have the ren Brum views you have banishment for light and dness dragon there's three more cards in your hand it's pretty good it's is a pretty good combo even though it looks pretty basic um and then is Al plus shed this one is interesting I think this one is important because what a lot of players do when they draw Str it is they just activate it right they would start that turn by just activating trout it and I think that's a mistake sometimes you have to consider what you have by conding with the shrouded in a specific way so this combo for example you can to search for High Spirits and you're going to activate albon as CH one you're going to send retribution and you're going to CH the High Spirits it's important that you Chun because you don't want to you don't want to send away your High Spirits Target so by sending it to the graveyard you are not going to get a draw but it's worth it because you now have a stronger combo you now got Titanic clad into the graveyard which is going to be Quan in the end phase you also got to use cesia which you going to use now going to summon brand gell and we're going to access branded Fusion from the graveyard using an shra dragon and Saria P so that sends branded Fusion we add it back and from here it's just a one cat combo ALB on into the Bellion into miror Jade into branded lost and then end phase but the difference is we now have access to quen Alas in the graveyard got teas ears available and we have gr grola motation as well so this is an alab one cut combo but because we do the shrouded we get to do this extra combo it's definitely worth going for this overdrawing a random Cloud next is aliber and Nadia so the thing about Nadia combos is that in General Media 7 just activates and does its own thing at the end of any other combo so as you might expect this combo is just going to be an alibo one God combo followed by an Adida servant one card combo then here we have to send Gora to draw a card it has to be Maximus if we're not playing Maximus then the DIA gets not a lot of value because they've already used I normal sumon so we draw a card and then we're going to summon the Maximus and that's going to send Lula W and Titanic L this is going to give us access to Clen and this is going to give us access to cesia if you're not playing the L one there actually not a great card to send you you can send maybe elbow lenus but that doesn't do anything on the opponent's turn that just searches you followup um if you are playing this you're going to want to send it you could send a gr greno you could send a renr but you're going to be able to send Ren R anyway and Gran grol isn't that good you're already going to get access to quen so this line gets a lot better when you have Lulu in the deck but if you don't then the next next best thing to send probably [Music] is yeah it's probably Grand greno or litus but going to summon the Quan and now it's going to send albz and now you're going to summon cesia to the field you also get albon like usual set banishment we still have le Bellion on the field so we might as well go for the banishment and that's that combo this is how lot of media combos look now we has aless foolish so if we think about what foolish represents in a vacuum since we already have an noos foolish is really just a way of sending alaz to the grave and El Wonka combo doesn't actually set up alaz in the grave head so it stands to reason that one way to use it in this combo is to just do an alabra one got combo and then send alas to the graveyard with foolish thus a very valid way of playing this you have your basic one card line plus Alber in the graveyard or alas sorry in the graveyard um and we have Al sock this is pretty much the exact same thing if you want to but you gold suck can search for shed Dragon you can actually do the same line as Alaba fles shrouded and as you can see the end void is the exact same between these two combos because the line is the same which makes sense yeah so this is the exact same and board as we had before next is alabra and C so since we have Alaba we can do a Alaba one cut combo and if you want to you can use the cartesia just as your lellan discard for a regular one C combo in fact that would even allow you to do a nice extended combo if you can imagine activating the marade in the one cut combo line to send Titanic lead and excess Quam in the entries we can actually send alabas to the graat since we already have cesia we discarded it with lelling so that is an option but there's also a stronger option with just these two cards which goes like this so we're going to summon Alon but we're not going to activate its effect we want the albas in the graveyard so that we can use our cesia we can still tribute we can still bring out branded lost and now we get to use CES here you put the alas of the alari in the gray we summon the grand gel we search away bred lust now we're going to send Saria and pair it with the shrouded Dragon so that we can search for a branded in white we need to get branded in white here because we haven't accessed mirror Jade yet so we're going to draw a random card we're going to add the Branded in white back and now I can summon mirade going to set banishment because we have Rebellion on the field now we have grin on the graveyard on top of our regular one cut combo board we also drew a random cut so it's the same thing but better we also going to add the cesia back to our hand as well so because we have a mid her one BR gell can actually summon quen which can send alaz which is going to make it's going to make a a nice addition to this regular one card board um if you want to discard cards though with adamia you can actually do a pretty strong board it goes like this so this is Alaba plus cesia plus a couple of discards so we're actually going to search for opening the reason we going to search for opening instead of branded Fusion is because we want to get access to branded Fusion later by summoning quen because we want to make use of quen's second effect and also as its value on the and board so we're going to send shrouded which is ALB in the graveyard so we can summon our cesia now we're going to use the shrouded to send retribution now we're going to use the cesio we're going to summon gruel and we're going to trigger both effects the quen and the grol bring back cesia this is now available on our end board Seria p with the shouted sear as for branded fion from the great here and now we're going to do our regular line we're going to summon mobilion into miror Jade into tribute into branded loss into end phase and now we have banishments for light and darkness Dragon we have Mir vanish and we also have Quan cesia on our end board right so the previous version that we showed where you didn't use any discards set up the same board minus the Quan and the cesia this time we have them on the field by using our disco next is alra and quen this is in here just to demonstrate that drawing quen is not a combo piece if you draw El plus quen you have access to a Al one card combo except you don't even have the option of going for the extended combo unless you play a second qu because you've already used it it's already in your grve so here all we can do is bring out the Branded BL and set the banishment we do have the option of Reviving quen with the banishment which could be strong but it's probably not stronger than just summoning Lightning dness Dragon and ending on the Omni neat right and if we did play a second Quan we could use the marade to banish the rebellion and play with High Spirits the end phrase instead of setting banishment uh next is uh opening plus alibo and two discards this is a pretty strong combo so it's the same idea that we've seen before where you send murer and then banish it for Gran canel and then access lellan this way with Gran canel rather than sending it directly then we're going to revive the alaz use the kit search for white we've seen this before we're going to get shrouded dragon and then send the sword add the r or jard and we're going to search for mcua or add mcua back from the bstone so this is a pretty strong combo this is something you can do with opening plus um alabra what you can also do is the exact same line from the four as well which is this one the aliber plus branded Fusion ending on this end board you can do that as well if you think about it Alaba and brand of fusion plus one discard is the exact same as Alaba plus opening because you just change what your ala searches this time it searches for for Branded fusion and in this combo it searches for opening so you can also do the exact same line it says you can also do the line in combo 23.5 which is this one you can end on this exact same board as well and it even requires one less discard um next we have elev plus dup this is showcasing a reum luck most of these combos are assuming that we don't have requium in the deck because most of these lines can find a way to force a requium luck if you want but there are other strong end Bloods you can go for as well and but for the sake of the duplication combos we're going to assume that we have a requium because that's the strongest thing you can do with with duplication so here it's just a standard elow one card combo but we're going to activate the marade and this is not an option in this line if you're playing recream you really want to do this because in order for duplication to be a dup luck sorry a uh requium lock in order to lock with just dup you need to have access to a light spell cast which is why we're definitely going to go for the extended one card line like banishing ellion triggering the Titanic lad and getting access to a quen so this is the Hep in the end phase line that we've seen before and then sometime on the opponent's turn we're going to activate the duplication probably in the standby phase and we're going to banish the Branded fusion with an ascendum as material follow Rebellion Rebellion can actually discard the card that we have in hand and we're going to make sanctify it's important that we have space on the board so we don't want to need this L trigger Al quen if we trigger a quen on the sum of L Bellion then we would not have had room to activate sanctify here so we're going to wck we loock and we're going to do this under the Branded lost window so we have ALB on on that b the reason we put Al on on our board and the reason why we use this card a different card and keep this elbow is so that we can use the cesia to fuse with the albas to make and Furious driv so so we can use use this albon the the albas I'm like can make Furious and Furious is really good in addition to a reum look because it allows you to pop vro in the end things which is just about the only thing they can do under requium luck it also negates Fire King sanctuary as well which is one of the ways in which they could out the requium luck and we're also going to search for mcua as well for good measure next we have alipa and High Spirits plus a discard so this is a similar line it's not got a r look but this is also another line where we're going to use High Spirits in the end phase so as you can see it's just a one cut Alaba combo where we we go for the extended line the only difference is because we already have the High Spirits we don't need to use our albon to search so we're going to add the cuts easier we're going to go for the full the full line regular combo that we've seen before revive the cut easier to our field but we also get to to keep that branded in red because we didn't need to use our albon sech on the High Spirits because we already had it uh next is ala plus keeper this is just another ala one C combo it's in here to demonstrate that if you have both of these you better off just summoning the Alaba and then then discarding the keeper so this combo uses zero zero discards the standard one card combo and then if you want to actually use some discards alot plus keer plus two discards we can go for a combo like this so in general because because Kar is a dark dragon if possible we want to search for High Spirit so that we can we can delay our branded Fusion search by getting it with kit instead and the benefit of that is that we get to the Titanic FL of the gradient which is something we don't get in the one cut combo so it's it's very worth it I've explained this before discards are not worth the Titanic so we're going to go for the standard one card combo what we know how Titanic CL in the end phase it's a go for clam send albz and then we're going to set Al banishment so it's the same board but stronger because we used a bunch of disc cards and man there's also this line which is Al plus keeper and then one extra disc card so the previous line s used two discards this one is going to be showing what you can do if you just want to discard one cut so maybe you have some non-engine Cuts in your hand that you really want to keep we're going to go for Branded lost and we're going to make Verte so this line actually plays around Ash providing that they don't Ash High Spirits most plays will not Ash High Spirits but some will so now you're going to search for shrouded and you then draw a card and then you can use the albon to set the Branded so we have albas in the graveyard as a target for Brandon in red we can make a second marade we can go marade banish Brandon in red make a little Bellion into another mirade we can revise with run Brom first we can also Target the Ala at any time with the Branded in red if you want to make Kim so this is reasonable a decent board it's something to consider is around Ash and it's yeah it's not terrible uh next is alabra and kit this is an interesting line uses two discard so it's pretty expensive but it is pretty much just a alibo one God combo followed by kit at right and kit just searches for any spell or trap that you want in addition to your one cut combo so you're going to summon the kit and we're going to search for Branded King it could be banishment Brandon red and of course you can follow this up if you wanted to with the extended line will you activate the marriage right and that is this line exactly I have this line here which is activating the miror aade same line as before but we're going to go for the extended line instead so what's interesting here is that because we have the kit on the board to banish we get to keep Rebellion which means we can set banishment and we had the means to go into light and darkness trackon okay and then the next one we have Alaba plus white this is one option for when you draw ala plus branded and WIP a lot of the time if you have just Alaba and branded in white what I have been doing is just discarding the white for my lellan discard but there is technically other options that you can go for so this I'm going to go into Titanic clad whenever brand had lost when it go into the Rebellion make mirror Jade and now we have the means to send an albas to the grard we're going to draw a random card and now we have quem in the end phase we're going to add cesia back and this is basically a albon lless line so what we could do instead during the end phase is actually activate the marage if we wanted to this forwarding back cesia sending an Alon and then Reviving The cesia to the field with Quan we're going to banish the rebellion and then we're going to get albon in the graveyard to set something like Brandon and red that is a possible play um it might be stronger than this I think it's probably a bit stronger than this but this is this is fine and it's just one of the options anyway I think there is a much better option here which is I plus white plus a discard and this is version two so I think this is what I just talked about will you activate the marriage Aid yeah so we're going to activate the marij J we're going to banish the rebellion and we're going to revive quen we're going to set Brandon in red this time because rebellion's gone so we can't make like dest Dragon the mar Jade is dead on this end board but overall this is fine we don't have an Alazan diffus with the cesia but we also have haven't made through Grand guo yet so it is very easy for us to activate CIA fuse way to marage aade suon Grand guo and then quen can revive back Maring uh next combo is alab PR Mac plus one discard this is surprisingly good right you look at the end board we can see that we have more than you'd expect so so the mccu here is not just an endboard piece so we could go for an alra one cut combo and I just keep the mcua in hand as a disc card blushy a better way to play it which is by sending cesia and banishing it for Alon and then going like this getting branded and white going for marij Jade this way so now we have banishment with the mellion we have albas in the gread we have a mar Jade banish and assuming that we have a second mcua in the deck we also have mcua abailable to search if we don't have mccu in the deck then that's one less destruction but we could search for alz and then Gran G triggers to summon quen quen sends cesia cuz we already have Alat cesia if that gets revived that's going to give us the means to use an elbow as in the hand effectively as a description so this combo is pretty good it's a it's a stronger way of playing it so don't be fold into thinking that mccu is always a brick sometimes drawing it does actually lead to a combo and then there's also Al plus retribution this is exactly the same idea just because you drew a brick does not mean that he doesn't combo with your status so this could be an aler one card combo well we just discard retribution for followup but we could also search for opening instead and that gives us access to quent which is going to extend our one C combo quite a bit it's going to add extra extra things to our end board so here we're going to send cesia and we're going to see this familiar line a familiar line that we've seen before a few times but we use quen to revive cesia and then we're going to summon Grand Canal it's not actually the line that I thought it was um we're just going to get rid of the albon by fusing it away we're not going to send we not going to send a ellion to the grard we could just put it into the grard by fusing it for GR so this line does miss out on branded lost we're going to use the shroud of dragon to send alas to the graveyard so that we have that and we're going to add back cesia then activate Alon and that's going to set Brandon in red because we have no lilion and this is the end board we have alas in the graveyard branded in red mired so that's it for the Ali combos P so for the keep combos you have Ka plus Rebellion plus one discard this is going to be the same as Alaba Plus sellium so because you can use Keeper in the exact same way as Aliva in a lot of the combos it is going to be the exact same cut and this is one of those examples so this is the same end board we had with Alaba Plus the Bellion again you're setting brandes in red because you bounce the Bellion back to your hand and the reason you can't leave it on the field is because you don't have a target for vanishment I to remember that hell be on his scent with mirade which means you can't Target it with management which is why we're not trying to make light and darkness Dragon otherwise we would if we could Target this we would leave the Rebellion on the board set banishment and make three omits right most of the combos that can do that will try to do that uh next up is keeper plus SAR so if you remember the combo with Alaba we actually searched for High Spirits in this line but we can't actually do that because keeper does not search for high Sprints right it only searches for Fusion normal spells which is either branded Fusion or Fusion deployment um but we can do a similar thing we're actually going to search for Branded Fusion and I'm going to use the Seria in a different way so with this and board you can see we actually made use of keeper second effect top sumon Elbas from the grad this is something that you see a lot and it's one of the key differences with keeper is that you can make use of its second effect to bring back an alibi from the gravat and what that usually means is that in a real hand we have lots of different extenders you could summon a ren brm with your branded Pon quite a lot in this combo it actually wasn't because we had the best deal that's not the reason why we wanted to summon Ren it was because we had te so we can specially summon the alas from the gra that gives us access to albas again for Al cesia which allows us to get back to mer so this is a pattern to watch out for usually you're can have seen a lot of these combos that keep uh ends up summoning rroom with branded Fusion so I move on to the next combo we have keep Pia plus two discards this is another combo line you can go for the first combo required sword um and I believe this one does not need to play sword yeah so this is what you could do if you don't play sword so here it's making use of the fact that we can search for deployment and then it's bearing cesia into Grand grol with Seria to search for Branded Fusion and now it's just a basic one card line where we get to miror Jade and we bring out Brad at last this time we do set management because we have a target for it and yeah this is the alternative line see it's not quite as strong as an endb there's no quam on the end field but we can still get to it with gr grol if our opponent allows it uh so next this is keep up with albz you can see the endp here is looking pretty basic it looks like a one card combo with an additional elb in the graveyard yeah so this is a one card combo line but our discard was alaz so we were able to use it as our discard for keeper and then we use one more discard for our Belling um next is keeper post deployment so this is going to be a really good example of comparing l and keeper so the AL plus keeper combo or sorry the AL plus deployment combo ends on the same board that this combo good we're going to go for the exact same line but using Keeper in place of Al so we go for cesia first to play around imperum and then we go for the same line utilizing the one extra disc card that we need to end on the same board it's the exact same line is if we had Alaba except we needed one more discard so we draw a random card and then we s the qu in the end phase get back CIA and set management or branded in red yeah brand is the same end field that we had you remember we have quen marij Jade Brandon red Elis in the graveyard and if we look back at at alabas deployment combo it's the same nfield you have quen Brandon and red marade alas in the grard um but here would can see that there's actually another version this makes use of keeper second effect this uses the differences between keeper and ala to make a much stronger end board this combo goes like this so we still need two discos because we need one for keeper but the second one is not going to be for lellan it's actually going to be for Kit as you'll see so we're still going to start with cesia because this is how you play around in PR and Baya we're going to summon their keeper and we still going to search for Branded Fusion but this is where we can make use of keep the second effect like I said a minute ago because we have access to another elus by special summoning it face down and then fusing with it with cesia we can summon Ren Brom here instead and ren Brom usually leads to really strong end BS so we're going to summon back the albas now we can use cesia going to ALB on this way remember we can still fuse with face down monsters that is not a problem we're going to banish the the CA and the the cesia or we're going to go for GR we're not going for lellan into mirade yet it might be very tempting right the banish makua and Al's discard this card in hand and make a Mir and then be done with it but that would not actually be that strong because we would have Mary J we would have Ren brm but we would still have albian on the field we could activate the mirade and negate it to send Titanic lad but we still don't have a way of putting the AL be on in the gr good so there's actually a much stronger way to play this which is by going for gruno so we're going to trigger both effects we going to search for Kit this is why we need the second discard and I'm going to send L Bellion discard can send L Bellion and this is how we're going to get our albon off of the field we're going to get Brandon lost and now kit is going to be up a search for Branded and white it has to put back the discard and now it can use the Branded and white to banish the albas that we have on our graveyard send the grand canol to the graveyard and this gets us our marage a and then what we can do is check a branded lost and then during the same chain activate the marriage a this is just a play around A disruption from our opponent we really don't want to be doing the renb to get your own merid play if your opponent has a responses because if they chain it to the marriage Aid you can no longer negate your marriage and that's going to be a problem it means your merate is not going to be Al for the next turn and it also means you going have to banish one of your a monsters so we're going to do this in the Branded lost window so they correspond and we're going to search for shrouded we're adding back lellan because we have no activated its effect yet so we can actually discard this and use it we're going to do this first we're going to search for magnon if you're not playing Magnum you could consider not using it first and just drawing a card um because you only have one target so if your strategy actually Drew into sarinia here then lellan would be good so you would want to I guess you would use it first yeah you would still use it first just in case the shadow dragon Drew into it but now we're going to send another alabas we're going to draw a card and I'm going to go anay and we bring out Quin and this ends bred sword branded sword here adds back Mia it's important to do this in the end phase you might as well and then we get brand D bread so you can see we have alar back into the graveyard Grand ganol available we have branded in red we could theoretically have because this alvon is is a target this is properly summon we could have set banishment and then chose to keep lellan on the board instead of bouncing it back to our hand and instead we could bounce the kit back to our hand for follow in many ways that is stronger because that gives you access to the three onni negates from light Darkness dragon lord and but this is the com of the lar to sear from magnut so if if this is a really important card in the match up maybe you're playing a mirror or maybe it's t elements or something this could be stronger but I think for the most part once once light and darkness dragon is released you should just leave the lellan on the board and then go for banishment instead but that's the endfield so this is really really strong and this is not possible with ala plus deployment this has to be keeper so next is keepa plus branded Fusion this is another strong combo it goes like this so this combo made use of the fact that we can search her deployment if we already have branded Vision this is something that you might do in general with keeper you can search for Pion deployment if you already have a way of accessing branded Fusion it's it's a pretty good play to do that because access in cesia extends your play by quite a lot so this is basically a Alber plus deployment combo this is basically the same INF field and then something to remember about this combo as it says in the notes that we can also do the same line as in 45 as 44.52 which is this line if you think about it key that was deployment where you search for Branded vision is no different to keeper plus branded Fusion pleas search for the planet they both acquire two discards so you can end on the same board this is one alternative it's the same as this and then you can also do this line as well now next is keep it plus last so keep it plus last plus one discard should be ending on a a pretty mid-range board so this is the [Music] combo yeah so it's a pretty basic one card combo but we have an extra alipa extra alar sorry in the graveyard and then we can also upgrade the combo by adding one more discard into the mix which lets us end on a much much stuner board this is again going to make use of the differences between keeper and Al so it's important that you recognize when you can use keeper like this [Music] so here because we already have lost on the field and we've already used it there's no reason to send lellan we can just send um in this case we're could we sent shrouded because it's s and I could send branded sword so that we can get access to our cesia back or at our mcua now we're going to use the kit get the Branded in White and the important difference here is that we have to send the AL onto the graveyard not the grol just so that we can get this into the graveyard and there's the miror Jade again we're going to use this in the Branded last window there's no reason not to we're going to B the kit for followup and we have to send another alas because we don't have one yet so this is the Endo it's pretty good we're also going to set with albon first this is branded in red it's not banishment because we don't have access to L Bellion so if you want to access like d as Dragon it's not going to be through banishment and yeah this is a similar line to the one we sell the full make sure you keep in mind this idea of um keeper being used in a in a different way right to speci as someone back and alz in defense position very good effect don't overlook it next is keep up the shrouded so if you remember when we had Alo bur plus shrouded we would actually search for high spits because this is a dark dragon it's a really good High Spirits Target we can't do that with keeper we're not allowed to search for High Spirits but we can instead search for a deployment which pairs with the Sania oh sorry with the shata dragon by getting to Saria with GR and that searches for Branded Fusion it's the same thing that's searching for it directly but we also get a cesia and crol into rotation which is much better and then here is just the basic line albon into the belly and into marade tribute for burnard lost and phase set our banishment we have banishment because we have the Bellion yeah so this is a basic one Cod combo but we use the shrouded instead to ensure that we accessed cesia and gr grol so we now have access to quen if we instead if you could imagine this in a real game if you instead just shotgun the shrouded and use it to draw a card like upst Goblin and you don't draw into an extender and you just send something like a attribution then this is not possible right it's not possible um I guess it technically is possible because you can still search for deployment yeah it's technically still possible because you can search with deployment and then use with the keeper so it is still possible I guess that would be a stronger way to play it so there's actually no reason to play it like this right no no no no I'm confused never mind this is correct we played it we played it properly right if we reload the combo you can see this was quite exactly how I thought it was we definitely draw the card first you're supposed to draw the card first yeah so we draw the card I thought for a second that we used cesia to fuse away with the shrouded but we didn't so we we draw the card you might as well draw a c anyway next is keeper plus Nadia this this is again if you remember what I said about Nidia combos in general they don't combo much because once you use n deer you are locked right so it's pretty much just the rest of your hand Combos and then Nida does its thing which is what you're going to see here it's a one cut line and then the de one C condo we draw aai with Gora we send with Maximus and we're going to send lul will and Titanic Blood so here we have albon which is summonable so we set banishment we have Rebellion we have cesia we have quams and hellar if we're not playing Lulu will you could send maybe Rend Brum here or maybe Grand granal if you're playing too but um neither of those are particularly that good you can get the grand ganol anyway using CIA if you playing Lulu then the DI works really well in fact I don't really recommend playing the DIA without playing Lulu it's fine but um not only as an extender really like if you're going to use it in a full condo like this you're going to find that you're going to miss one send all right there's going to be one send from your exra deck that you don't really know what to do with because you don't have any valuable send right so Lulu can sometimes really help out with that um next is keep a plus for this burial so you can see again we search for deployment which is a similar idea as before we're going to access branded Pion through retri because we just want to get access to Grand who want this initation instead of doing a one card line and then sending sending albas we're going to get Gro into rotation because it's stronger right we don't have alz yet but as soon as they trigger the grol we're going to summon Quan and we're going to send El so it's it's pretty much the same thing but better um next is keep plus gold sovus this should be a very similar thing poolish and goldar are very similar in this respect yeah so we're going to search for shrouded we going to send s new and then access our brand fusion and do a one card combo yep so this is the same end board as the last combo then we have keer plus cesia this is another interesting example of using keeper as Ali to make a weaker endp or we can use keeper with its second effect to make this much stronger and board which you'll see here so just start with this is the first line and this is what you can do if you're not playing branded sword so notice that we did not actually activate our Alum we just summoned the and then pass to well not not directly but we Summit it and then pass priority right we wanted to Tribute it full the Bellion and the reason we didn't activate it is so we can keep albas in the graveyard to summon our cesia um an interesting consequence of lines like this that you don't really notice or think about until it happens is that since we didn't actually activate albon if we were to get neiro at some point in this line it would actually go very well for us because we would trick a grand goodal to get hen and we would also chain miror Jade to send Titanic lad from my extra deck in the end phase we can actually use that Titanic lad to summon out an elz from our deck and then fuse with the the nabira which is at light into the second albon and then because we didn't use the first one we can actually activate that albon's effect we can summon something like Furious and inam is in to revive like our Mir so if you're ever going to not activate albian or not go for albon you have a much stronger punish for a be in general just something to to think about um and then this is the other option if you are playing branded sword this is using peer to its fullest potential so again we have the same end B and what we could have done if we wanted to make light and darkness dragon is set banishment keep the Rebellion on the field instead of searching for magn and number return the kit to the hand as follow up instead um next is keep it BL quen this is a one cut combo this is to demonstrate that the quam hyron does not really do much so we have Quan available as a target for vanishment but once light and D as dragon is in the scene there's kind of no reason to ever want to Target the Quin you just you don't have sumon fore on the negates certainly instead of qu but it is a viable option then we have CAD plus opening so this combo actually requires three discards so this uses the whole hand so this is a similar line we've seen before where we actually delay sending this the lellan and we send it with grand granola instead to Tri L Alan we also revive the random elbows to the field with quen so that when we fuse with branded in white Yas goes back to the graveyard instead of being baged so now we use our last discard kit now the albas is back in the graveyard and we can search for shrouded which sends branded sword a lot of these lons by the way if you're not playing branded sword you can still do the same line for the the most part if you're playing a second mcua so on the AOS stand when you do a Fusion sumon you can search for the second mcua and then instead sending branded sword with something like Sania or shrouded whichever sends it then you can send something like ration for followup and then we set banishment here as well next is keep up L duplication again and this is showing a requim look just again demonstrating that duplication makes it very very easy to requim look and it's also going to showcase the fact that you can do an extended one cut combo if you have duplication and you very you very much should because you want to access those light spellcasters in order for Fusion duplication to be a lock by itself so I'm going to activate the mirade I access quen accessa cesia this is the nase High Spirit line we've seen this before search for albz revive the cesia and then in the opponent's turn we can use a duplication to lock our opponent I'm going to Sone sanctify and we're going to give them the reim we have keep up plus High Spirits so this is an interesting Line This is basically the same thing except we don't have dup but we are going to go for the end phase line where we use High Spirits in the end phase so this is the same end board for the most part except inide of duplication we have Brandon and red we're allowed to get the Brandon and red because we hard through the high spirit so we're do to search for it with Alon and then we have keeper Plus mcua this is pretty much a one card combo again but with a a little bit of a bonus because we get to banish mcua from the gradi yet with album so we get to triet the AL on here or the mcua I mean and the such was shrouded the rest of the one card line is the usual thing and now we get to put Alis in the graveyard for free draw a card and inste set banishment so what we could do if you wanted to is the extended one card combo you could also instead of sessioning for shrouded in the carea we could search instead for something like kit and then extend but that would require the use of more discards and again we could also send sword in instead of albas so that we could get back our only mcua to use as a disruption and then a way of maybe improving that would be to activate the marade and go for the heisers line as well so that we can get albas again once we fuse with the cesia and then we have keep up with kit with three discards again uses the full hand [Music] for so on this end board we have mirade vanish Lin Alis in the graveyard quen and revive Al come can also Rive mirade we have gr ganol INRI someon kitis and vman can make L dest Dragon we haven't been to amoca yet so we can search for it with Rand L it's pretty strong and boo doeses use the whole hand though and then the last keep combo is keep plus branded in white which ends on this it says here we do the same line as 39.1 which is this one Al plus y+ one discard ends on this line so what this is basically saying is that we can activate our mirade if we want a stronger endb to go for the extended one card line [Music] [Music] so that is it for the keeper combos you can see it says here that keeper combos can be stronger when you discard certain key pieces like VB this is true also keep in mind that sometimes your keeper is just alabo with an extra discard and sometimes it's better because you can revive out you can revive alas to the field and that allows you to do some fancy Ren Brom lines which end on these early Str lines here and things like that um so next is the opening opening is again Syle at a keeper in that it is sometimes just alur with an extra discard but sometimes it's not so we'll start with this first one which is opening plus l this is the exact same and board as the other lines that use lellan which is the Bisal combo the only difference this time is that we're going to play in the Dr phase because we want to play around gr and Baya on I alab so we're going to search for Branded fion then we're going to go for Brin and then we're going to go for the rest of this line yep so this is the same end board as before every time we draw Li Bellion we dra we do a S end board this is one of your strongest end boards you still have access to pretty much everything the only thing you don't have is mcua unless you play another one um next is opening plus Serenia this combo looks like this so we are again going to play in the draw phase to beat draw and baa and we're going to search for High Spirits remember Alpa can search for heis birds and Pa with Seria it's better than searching for brand INF Fusion directly because better get brand INF Fusion to the graveyard but also getting Titanic H in the graveyard for free so from here we're just going to do the one card [Music] line the basic line and I'm going to go end phase and we get all of our key pieces into play we have miror Jade we have branded lost we have Quinn an ALB on set and Elbas in the grade yet next is opening plus alvas this ends on another basic end board except we're putting alvas in the graveyard so you can maybe infer at this point exactly what this combo is going to look like it's going to be an opening one code combo but just putting albas in the grard by discarding it and if that's what you thought was going to happen you would be right that's exactly what it is next is opening P albas plus three disc so you might have expected there is more we can do with opening p albas and this is what you can do if you want to discard more cards from your hand [Music] we're going to search for High Spirits again this time making use and ala as being a good High Spirits Target that gets us the Titan clad in the graveyard and then we can just use kit search for baned Fusion instead yeah so this has pretty much everything we need alaz banishment Mir quen and mcua can search on the opponent's turn I am opening post deployment plus two discards you can see this is a pretty big end board so this time we have branded a red and you can see the pattern here every time we have the Bellion it's always vanishment and every time we don't it's always branded in red next is opening plus deployment was three disc so this is another option you can go for this combo again doesn't use its normal summon so you can see this time we get branded in bread and also branded King we sexr branded King with the kit this is basically just a way of adding strength to the end board by using one of our extra cards in hand if we do a back if the card in hand was not useful then this can be worth it as branded King does add some extra strength to the end board here and then the next combo is opening plus Rand Fusion so similarly to how it says here it's the same line as compa 23 if we look back up right here get Aliva plus brand Fusion plus two this cards here so what this means is that we can also do this line here I think no we can't do this line we we can't do this line because this requires Alaba to search for opening to get quen and here we have opening plus branded Fusion which is not the same thing because we don't have we don't have aliet and quen okay so this is what this combo ends on you can see it's still going to go for a similar line where we banish for Coura for grino we're going to search for Kit we're going to send lelli in the Hardway yeah so we're going to add that mcua and we're going to set banishments it is possible I think to do a line [Music] where instead of searching for Kit right away with mcua banish we're going to search for shrouded then sendor then add back the cut easier I'm going to make a similar line as we did before so I think I think it is possible to do the same line yeah so this this line here we can also end on the same end board as this one which is this line I believe this is possible as well you just need to change the combo a little bit and then next we have opening and last this ends on another strong board here this tell actually do use a normal sumon Rich search for one so this combo might look less fancy but it's pretty good it has everything you need you have n Jade you have quen you have Brun and bread elbow in the graveyard B it lost gr grel it's everything you want for the most part it's easily enough to win a game and then we have opening plus shrouded which ends on this end board here this one doesn't ease the normal [Music] Simmon so I'm going to search for high sprays because we have shrouded you can see a similar pattern here whenever you have a Target I burs and dark dragon you pretty much always go for it instead of the Branded Fusion because you could access branded Fusion later and you want to make use of High Spirits giving you that Titanic lad of free so this is the end board is pretty good and then we have opening plus Nar again we're going to be doing an opening one card combo here followed by n servant so we're going to draw a card with Gora and I look into some of Maximus and again this time we have not sent than I said first but I said Al but Maximus we actually said Grand so this does not need to send Lulu on it you could send Lulu if you wanted to but I thought I throw in an example where you don't access cesia like this and you just send granon no so this is something that you can do if you don't have lilu in your extra deck and then we have opening plus foolish which looks like this another really strong combo so we have everything we need here grel marade Quan managment alaz in the gravad and such from a Korea which we've not been through yet and then we have opening close sarcophagus this is a slightly different combo because what we can't do is send tragedy to the graveyard and then banish it I believe that that yeah has to use tragedy as material so we can't do that in this combo because of tragedy is not in our grav so the combo is actually a little bit different but it's still still just a strong and it looks like this so the reason why we banished makua instead of tragedy is because we really wanted to add it back with branded sword that's important that we did that um next is opening plus cesia so we also need two discards notice that we start know while summoning the cesia instead of activating opening in the draw phase like we've done in every other combo this is because you don't want to play R role and Baya you'd rather just play around Baya and imp pom which is more reasonable your opponents are more likely to be on infom and they are droll so you want to just know more cesia now your aliber is protected from inun you so next is opening plus quen plus two discords so see here this the a draw too and the way we get to that is with Gora so you didn't need to be playing Gora for this although it's not the end of the world if you don't play it so this time we are going to go for opening in the draw phase although one consideration is that you could actually start with normal someone quam just because if it bakes the inom then the opening is a little bit better if alra gets inomed here then a qu does not actually extend it's not a one cut combo and we can't make a birthday because opening locks us out of summoning late monsters so I think the better way to play this is most the time he's going to be the normal summon the quen fist so this is better into impon and but the way that this combo has done it is playing around vea and draw so this is all we draw a card the only reason we send it is because we don't need anything [Music] else we're going to draw a random Cur that's what that was and then we're going to set branded and red because we don't have the mellion at back cut easier and the Z Bo is marij Jade branded and red Elbas and graveyard grand gun or quen a mccu is available if we wanted to if we didn't have Gora in the actual deck maybe we don't have room for this what we could do is send L and then someone cesia from our hand we could send Titanic and then search for an extra alz we could also be sirenia and then send a retribution or find it sword for sometime later so there's a lot of options but since we didn't need anything desperately the best thing to do is actually just to grow a card if you can and then we have opening for D this is just again another example of showing a ram luck using duplicate ation so we activate the mirror Jade because we need the light spell casters and now we can do the end phase highper as line and that allows us to use duplication make sanctifier and reum the opponent and we're going to do it under the Branded loss window there's a heaven the cour here for an a gate for a normal summon monster and we have albon with cesia cesia confus the albon with the albas into Furious dragon and that can pop backro so this is a complete shutdown of the opponent we can't summon they can't use the normal summon and they also kind use back row it's pretty good um next is opening plus High Spirits this is again whenever you draw a High Spirits plus no good targets for a lot of the time what you're looking at is an end phase I Spirits line so we're going to search for our Target by adding got easier back so that usually means you end up with dead mirids in these lines it's another pattern that you can try to remember [Music] [Music] yep exactly as I said and then we have opening plus tragedy this is I like this line This is a particularly cute line to me whenever you H dra a tragedy and make use of it I actually really like it I get a call so what you're going to do is activate opening and discard the tragedy and you're going to do it in the drill phase to player and drw going to chining one Al and Chin 2 tragedy that's to play around gam and I you can know sumon youran [Music] [Music] so because we used quen to send cesia and not elbows it's important that we search for shrouded Dragon to send elbows to the graveyard it's probably stronger to do this then to search for kit kit plus an extra discard would let us search for another trap or spell so I can brand it in red or Brad of kin or their retribution but getting albas into the graveyard is really important so it's probably better to go for shadow dragon even if you do want to use an extra discard for Kit next is opening plus mura this is surprisingly not a brick you can banish the mcua from the GP yet so we're going to make use of the fact that we haven't used our normal Simmon we're going to search for the Quin next we have opening plus kit plus three discards this again Hees the whole hand this is pretty common when you open a lot of cards that require discard so opening is one of them and kit is also another one a lot of the time if you can't visualize your whole combo line then you can set of cheat by just adding up how many cards acquire discards and then adding one right because generally most combo lines go through lellan which means you need an extra discard for that and the guest starts if they also require discards you can you can figure out how many discards you're going to need for your opening hand and that's that's also how you can figure out if you can't afford to use them all right so sometimes what will happen in practice is that you'll see a hand like this and you'll see like an ash blossom in your hand and you'll realize that you can't keep the ash Blossom because this requires a discard this requires a discard and in bban also requires a discard so it's important to acknowledge things like that [Music] yep so that's the inboard this card is what we drew with trout this is not one from our opening hand we did have to discard our entire hand and then we have opening plus branded in white which again you could go for a similar line as before if we look here at Alber plus branded in white we have this option here will we activate our miroring end phase it could go for this line as well um but this line he at looks like this yep so we search for the Quan are able to search for it wa the Branded lost and that's it for the opening convers in general it says that they don't always use the normal sumon and they all give openings gray Gap protection this is something to remember when you have opening adjust data you always get it in the graveyard to protect from something like lightning storm oring okay so next is the Nadia combos you have Nida plus Rebellion you can see that this combo is pretty much just nidea on its own plus lellan right lellan can't combo with Nadia so you pretty much just in doing an idea one card combo and then activating mobilion right you can't make a v because Nadia 7 locks you what you could do if you already had a normal summon is normal summon first and then summon the magnant to make a Verte and then activate Nadia servant after using Verte um but we don't have a normal summon in this combo so it's the exact same combo we're going to send cesia we're going to search for highper as we've seen this before and we're going to revive the cesia so we have cesia diffused with alas on the opponent's turn but what makes it interesting is that we have Magnum This Is A disruption sometimes against some decks but more importantly it is a dark monster so we can actually use Gia to go into if you wanted to which is which is good it's good it means we don't have to go Al or albon we can reserve albon CH later if we want to um we can maybe go cesia into libellum and then use lellan to shuffle back the Titanic lad and the albon the furius and then the Quan can actually revive the albas that we still have available later on next is Nadia and Seria this is pretty much the exact same thing but we don't have Magnum we just have S um there is a slightly different way we can play this though as you'll see so here we have the exact same board except it's Cy instead of magnant however one option we could have gone for is actually to use the High Spirits with the Saria the reason why we don't is because having already gone through albon and Titanic lead it actually doesn't make any sense to want to send a dragon to the great yet cuz there aren't any more good ones so it's still better to send the grand grol to summon cesia and then everything applies here the S board is usable in the same way it can make Furious you can make miror Jade um next we have Nadia and obz so again the same idea applies we have to send the cesia with the Heiser it's not the albas because you've already been through both good dragons but what we do have to do now is search for or we don't have to but we can search for mcua because you already have Elbert so now we when we revive the cesia we have material to fuse with but we also have a free mcua now to use as a negate once we summon an elbow's fusion um and then there's nidea post deployment this is another Nadia combo that doesn't get a fusion summon it has to play purely locked out of the extra deck because deployment is not a one card combo by itself and we don't have anything to fuse with until we use Nida so the difference C is that because they already have access to cesia we don't need to access it through High Spirits so instead of searching for High Spirits we could just set a trap and the best one to set here is retribution because we have two Targets for it in the graveyard and there's also no dark monster so branded in red for albz is not that good in general you don't want to Brand it in red for albon because you need a second albas in the graveyard if you want to get to marade but if you have a dark monster then brand it in red fullu Bellion you only need one alz to get to nade right because you can Shuffle it from vanished um so you had a dark monster in your hand in addition here you could set branded in red and that would be a little bit more reliable than um then what we have here right just retribution which can be strong but it's a lot stronger to go via Fusion Blaze because they also represent sh so next is Nadia plus branded Fusion this ends on an actual strong board um because Nadia servant doesn't help extend it is basically a branded Fusion wut combo followed by an Adas 7 although there is an interesting way to play this as you'll see so it starts like a regular one card branded Fusion combo while we sing tragedy and we search for our normal summon we make marade and we search for brandid in red now we can just activate Nadia and go for the Nadia 7 one card combo which looks like this we get to draw our free card and then we get Maximus sending the alas fusions which gets us to quen and we get the cut easier back to our hand at the High Spirits and we go for this line again so this board has mired it has quen it has albas in the hand to feas with the cesio it has branded in red we already have a Target in the tragedy um but if we really wanted to Target the alas we can wait until we fuse it away probably better to just Target the tragedy though because we have a lot of free monsters on the board to use this Chimera material right Alber and Maximus they're not doing anything so we could banish them for camra with branded in red could also get rid of the miror Jade so that our cesia can then make a second miror Jade pretty strong board um one possible alternative way of playing this is it could activate the marade but that would be a little bit wasteful and because you already get access to Quinn through through the Maximus so this is the strongest way of playing this then there's Nisa was lost this is not really a combo it's just an AER one card combo we know that we don't fuse on the first turn with n so obviously we're not going to be triggering lost so it's pretty simple you going to activate n 7 and do the regular one card combo so the only difference here is that now that we have branded lost we can search for in myua on the opponent's turn once we fuse with guio next is Nadia and R Dragon so this combo again is this is a a little bit different this is the kind of hand that uses sh Dragon immediately straw a cut so because we have no other starter we have albon and N7 it makes sense that we would want to draw a card first just to try and find a potential start and we're going to send alz because in general if you don't have a starter then it's better to send alies with shrouded because it works with more top decks we could find cesia for example which can be special sumon we could find branded in white or branded in red but assuming that we draw nothing it's now just going to be a Nadia servant one card combo the only difference is we actually have an albz in the grave here so we don't need to wait until our cesia resolves in order to get access to it we're still going to go for the same line now and now here we have Elbas we can fuse on the opponent's time but we also can revise at any time with quen next we have media foolish and a discard so this is now the first time where we actually get a real combo we had a real combo with branded Fusion I guess as well but here because we have solish burial that's going to give us access to Al of it so this is our regular one cut combo the banishing tragedy instead of ala becomes because having alra on the field Muse it when when the opponent clears it they have to deal with its graveyard effect it just makes it slightly harder for us to be at deced so we're going to use Lulu in this combo to access cesia and we're going to set banishment because this albon is summonable so we can make a light and darkness trag in using the Rebellion if you're not playing lul you could send Bren brm here or grand it's it's kind of interchangeable but Lulu is the strongest thing here because we get access to cesia um next is the deer and gold sarcophagus which you can see ends on the exact same board because it's the exact same line so that's the exact same line as before the only difference is that we had to use the alas of the the aliber instead of the tragedy because we didn't have tragedy in the grave yet um so next is Nadia and cesia so this is another combo where we can't quite fuse on our turn because we don't really have the materials in a real hand you might have any light or dark monster in which case it's worth using the CIA of first but because we don't in this combo we just go for the nidea and we are going to normal summon the cesia we get access to Quan qu's going to send albz because we don't need to access cesia and we get to set vation since don't need to resolve High Spirits to get cut easy onto the field um again the same applies from the full if you have a dark monster in the hand then you could set branded in red but if you have a dark monster then you probably would resolve cesia and one thing you could do that this combo line didn't do but realistically I think you should is noral suon cesia the full going for Maximus it doesn't protect because after you result in a de servant you can't fuse away with cesia you can't use the effect but there's always a chance that your opponent doesn't realize that and they don't imperm Maxin um next is Nadar and quen this combo looks like [Music] this so what's interesting here is that by summoning quen first and sending Bia to the graveyard we could actually trigger it within the D7 a card leaves the exra so we can revise with Quan and draw a card with Dora and then cesia comes to the board now we can use Maximus so we now basically access cesia and Ecclesia or cesia I mean which means our end phase effects don't need to do the highp line we could just use Titanic to search for albas and we can use branded and red set whatever we want probably retribution is the best but again for the reasons I mentioned before whatever is the best set for the situation you can also set that um next is theia 7 plus d so this is interesting this is showing a re Lop because it's the strongest thing to do with do so what you're going to want to do this time is basically the same combo as normal except in order to make duplication lies you have to send branded Fusion to the Grave yet so you're going to summon quen but you're actually going to send brand of fusion instead of paresia and that means your albon has to set retribution then on the opponent's turn you're going to flip the dup you going to banish the duplication some of re belly in send their recam to the graveyard and because you have access to light spellcasters you can Shuffle one back for San toer and then use a sanctifier to lock the opponent and to your field you're going to have to summon anything that's summonable right now this combo was not technically doable because we didn't have a Monster to summon remember we can't revive these extra dech monsters cuz they weren't properly summoned so you you will have to wait until you either have another monster in your opponent's graveyard that you can summon or if your reum or your your lellan discard if it was a summonable monster then you can go for it right so if it was Maxi or something you can spat with summon it here um next is media and High Spirits so as you might imagine you can probably figure out what where this combo is going to go because like usual when we H your highp without a Target the best way to use it is usually by using one in the end phase with a cesia that we add back to hand so we're going to go for the Maximus and the dragons now going to send cesia which we get to the hand now we can use the High Spirits and because we don't need to search for it with albon it means we can set retribution and then we do the regular the line to revive the [Music] cesia and then the last combo here is nidea plus kit this is a real line because kit is a one card combo so we actually get to fuse see it's the same as combo 26 so here we are playing Lulu which allows us to get to cesia it's basically a one card kit combo followed by a one card nidea combo and if we see it's the same line as combo 26 but with one extra discard if we look back at combo 26 can see that it is what you do with alab NAD which makes sense because kit is just alab but with one extra discard um and that's it for the Nadia combos so and in general like I said they tend to just be bonuses to existing combos you basically use your other cards and then n basically goes on top of it the downside to this is that you don't get any like exponential combo Synergy but what you do get is very clean extension through hand DS so if your other com if your other combo gets stopped N7 basically is untouched and can do the same thing as it always does okay so next is the Quan combos this is Quan plus lellan this is an interesting combo because you can see it has Furious on the nend Ford this is I think the only combo on the spreadsheet that actually has Furious on the end board every time so usually you make Furious dragon as like an improvised thing like after you get hand trapped or you have a really powerful hand but this is the one combo that actually summons it every time so similarly to summoning rrum with branded Fusion you're making use of aisal Vanishing mcua by sending it with quen [Music] so this is the end board like I said it has Furious on it every time that's the ultimate way to play this you already have the mean to get to miror Jade so there's no reason not to use your albon effects to make Furious Dragon next is Quan plus lellan version two this is a different version and this is how you can play around Ash you see it has in the notes it says a version that plays around Ash so usually the way you can play around Ash is by going for Verte and in this case we're going to get magnam instead of Serenia the reason to get magnut instead of Serenia is because it achieves the same thing which is to banish the mcua and summon an extra body to the field that's going to allow us to get to Verte because you had two bodies before activating branded Fusion but magnon is just better than sirenia because it can search for the sirenia in the end phase so now we're going to link instead of trying to get to branded fusion and we're going to send it with thte and that's going to make the a marade now we're going to get to activate branded last one we're going to search for C you so we're going to draw a random card with the shrouded the reason to search cartesia is because there's actually nothing better to search you already have branded solid with the shrouded which is going to let you add back the mercuria if you are playing into the mcua you could add it to your hand with the Lost instead but the combo that I have chosen to go for here is actually playing with just one Mia and we're going to search cesia just so that we can discard it for alaz and get cesia into rotation and in the end phase what's going to happen is we get our marade sorry our Magnum at such when I have the mura in this turn there's no reason to wait for opponent St um and then sometime during the end phase you can search for your serenu which is going to get you retribution eventually because either you're going to summon it to the field and it's going to die and send retribution for Branded Fusion next turn or if it doesn't die you can easily fuse it away for cesia or discard it for albas it's very easy to get to the retribution that way one alternative way of playing it if you don't play Magnum or if you think this is this is the wor way of playing it one better way to play it could be to go for S anyway and then pair the shrouded dragon with the sirenia which will trigger to search for something like a branded in red or branded banishment next is Quia so usually when you have L Bellion as part of a combo you would think that Saria would be very similar but it's actually not a lot of the time s is a much worse version of lellan and you'll see in this combo that we don't do anywhere nearly as much here we're going to treat the mura like before and we're going to draw a card with shrouded but now we have no choice but to go into Verte and we're just going to send with the sarinia something like a branded King you could also get branded in red that's also very reasonable in fact it's probably probably better in most situations but for this example I've gotten branded king um you draw a card with shrouded first because you only play as birday so what you're going to do is draw first just in case it allows you to find something better to do maybe you draw into branded fusion and then You' feel very stupid for summoning the Verte already so yeah that's that's the best way you can play this combo next is qu plus Al does so this one is interesting this is something that it's not really a combo that needs memorizing it's more more about a concept that is important to realize and it's this idea of sending shrouded dragon to the graveyard and then summoning it to the field with its effect right remember that if you place it from the hand or send it from the hand you can special some in this card and that's from the hand or from the gradient so this is to let you get to Verte there's no locks involved in these effects so this is going to be a Verte line and it also makes use of the fact that shroud dragon can send elas even from the hand next is quen plus deployment so this combo is pretty much just a cesia Line This is how you get to branded Fusion you're going to use cesia Quan sends half of the Branded fusion and then grol is going to let you send the second half you could send sarinia instead the reason to send sarinia instead is so that we can keep a dark monster in the graveyard for Branded Fusion so here you can see we're going to go into Albin however there's no dark monster to fuse into Rebellion with so we're just going to make marage you directly using the gro and then as usual get a tribute to get the AL into the graveyard we have branded lost on the opponent's turn and we do have the means to make the light and darkness dragon look we also get CIA back to hand so if what you can do instead is no see it says in the the notes Here No doc monster to make lellan with If instead of sending shroud a dragon you send s you can then have a dark monster but in order to make lellan into marade you would beat in in a discard all right so quem plus deployment plus another discard is going to let you keep your grandol in rotation um Le this is quem plus branded Fusion so this combo looks like this so this did look pretty basic for a card for a line that hot your branded Fusion however that is sometimes what I find in branded it's quite surprising that sometimes when you hot your brand of fusion directly you actually have a more limited end board in my experience not always the S board is still fine but often you do we have clan we have miror Jade we have banishments and we can make the Omni negates with it we have alas in the graveyard so this is reasonably strong and if we're playing a second MCU an easily search for one um next is Quan plus shrouded Dragon so this is similarly to when plus um all similarly to how Sania and albon pair together to search for Brad Fusion qu is also like a third half to that pair CU she can also send retribution or branded Fusion to the Grave so what you're going to do is start with shroud of dragon the reason to start with shrouded dragon is because you might draw a better St you might draw into something like opening or aliber and those would be potentially better summons than the quen but assuming you draw nothing you going to go for quen and then send Brandon fusion and then here you can see that we actually have to do something very different which is to someone sanctify and then we can use cesia to send albon and Alon sets briad out in Red so we now have the means to make miror Jade on the opponent's turn we have stif to revive at albas and if we do have to use this albz earlier let's see if we revive it to the field with albon or with sanctifier I mean and it stays on the field we still have another Target with bred and red which is the the quam so it still potentially make Chimera it's the strongest way to play this surprisingly this is the strongest way to play this this hand we also get cesia back to hand although you could consider leaving it in the graveyard as a target for sanctify so here is another version of of playing quen for sh Dragon this is a line that you can do if you desperately want to ensure that you get to mirror Jade maybe you're playing against a matchup but you are certain that marij Jade is super important just going to start the scene you're going to add back the Branded fusion and I going a go Bellion with double albow so this is basically sending the second albz just so that you can leave it in the graveyard you're going to make marade and now you have a second albas still in the graveyard which you can revive with rendering will require more discards but that is that is something that you can easily choose to do and then there is another option here which is qu plus shrouded plus one discard so you can see this line makes use of when the getting get un marade with RRM and it also uses branded in white next is qu shrouded plus discard version two so does any way play this and this line goes like this okay so we have banishment marage Grand grol and there's no alas in the graveyard but if we do play a second Quan we can trigger gruell to summon a second Quan and that can send alas to the graveyard and then next is quen plus foolish so this is this is an interesting combo say you can see it says it's similar to combo 99 which is qu plus sh Dragon so this is a slightly better way of improving on an Al one got combo right if you start with foolish burial you have access to an alow one cut combo but with the quam you can actually make it stronger so you're going to use the foolish to send shrouded instead and then add BR Fusion B to the hand it's the same line but we summon sanctifier and then going to uh grol then I get access to branded and rad in the end phase and we have alas in the graveyard for sanctifier plus gr and branded in again similar to before if you send shrouded I sorry instead of shouted if you send serer with the foolish you can get a dog monster into the graveyard and then use l alion pause another discard to make marage Jade just like before well the SE one is qu plus foolish plus two discards so this is an option that you can do if you want to discard two cards okay so this is actually the the combo I just just mentioned with one discard not two so this should actually be changed I change this now to one discard and the sent board has it has access to light and darkness Dragon you'll notice that we actually fused away Al quen with cesia instead of the albon on the field and we did that so that we could access the Bellion you wanted to send lellan with grino trippy to Alon partly to get lost but also partly to leave lellan on the field so that we can make light and darkness if you didn't want to do that if you're not playing light and darkness dragon or if the cut is still not out when you're watching this then you can leave the quam on the board and that would probably be a lot [Music] stronger um the next combo is quen plus sarcophagus this combo looks like this [Music] so this is a very similar board that we've seen the fall with the Branded in red the sanctify and the grandel the Alas and the graveyard the difference with this one is you actually don't have the option of sending Saria because we're accessing our second half of the pair with gold sovus right which can only get us to mercuria and shrouded right it can't get us San so we're not able to use an extra discard here to access blue belly well next is qu for S Plus One discard so this is what this comra looks like [Music] okay so we actually can access a dark monster and that's exactly what this combo does it searches full opening instead of brand of fusion Al that's allows to get Alber into rotation and that's important because if the dark wants to follow Bellion and that's going to let us access mirror Jade and then we also do a similar play I mentioned earlier but we fuse awake one so that we can get access to lilion because it's important for light and dark I mix is quen plus cesia so this is what you can do with quen and cesia a lot of people seem to think that this hand is exceptionally strong if you draw quen and cesia I'm not actually quite sure where that misconception comes from because this is not actually an amazing combo as you'll see it's it's fine it's not that weak but it's also not that strong either [Music] [Music] so here you can see we have a very basic end board it's pretty much the essentials The marade The Lost and the access to light and darkness Dragon we have gr gono as well and that's going let us some on a second clim if we play one and if we don't then it's going to summon like a despian chitis next is quen plus duplication this is in here because it's pretty much demonstrating it again how duplication can be a one card recing look and we do require a discard because we're going to summon blue belly in on the opponent's turn on the opponent's turn we're going to banish the Branded fusion and because quam is a light spellcaster it's going to give us the ability to make sanctifier the only catch here is that yet again we would have to either discard a monster that we can summon with lellan while we would have to wait until a monster Hits the graveyard because of what our opponents do right so we need to wait for them to put a monster in the graveyard or if we discard one ourselves then we can use sanctify there's no other targets to revive all next is qu plus 2 plus a discard version two this is an alternate um where to play you can see the notes Here say if the lock is not good so if you're not playing R queen or it's not not good in the matchup maybe you're playing get stun or something then you have an alternate way of playing this like this so This combo allows us to someone in marriage Jade and then also use with alibas right and we required two discards for this so I'm going to put this here distance updating this requires two discards and this is not a version two anymore it's just version one and next is co heur is and tutor SCS so you can see here we have a pretty basic end Bo you can kind of imag imagine what this might be this is pretty much just acknowledging that quam is not a stter so we're going to use High Spirits to do the best thing it can which is search for kit and then kit is going to perform a one C combo but with the requirement of having to put one card back so we're going to normal summon we can't special summon because ramping on the graveyard is not an albas fusion and this is just a basic one card line remember that when you do High Spirits search for get to access a one card line like this you don't have the option of doing the extended line where you activate marate because you can't search for highp in the end phase and then use it because you've already used it um next is quem plus High Spirits so again this is something you can do with just heisers and qu the this is without using any disc so this is another option of how to play it so this is again a Verte line and it's taking advantage of the fact that you can summon albon from the graveyard like this by sending a card from the hand this doesn't require any discards so to be honest compared to the last combo while this is a lot weaker if you had three very important cards in hand that you wanted to keep you could consider doing this line instead it also plays around Ash of course because it's a ver line um and then we have uh quem plus kit plus a discard so this year is showcasing that quam is not a starter and kit is better so if you have a Quan and kit you're just going to summon the kit and then we're going to go for a one card [Music] combo so here one option you have is actually putting the quen into the deck with kit that way if it's your only Quin you can still go for the extended line will you activate Mery because you can then summon the clan back out from the deck so that would require using this as your put back for kit and then your other card as your discard and then the last quen combo I have here is quen plus branded in white this is again a ver line showcasing that any branded spellow trap in your hand plus quen can do this combo without requiring any discards in practice the rest of your cards and but they in your handles have to be very specific for this to be viable because what you can also do is use quam to send elbaz and then use branded in white to fuse something away from your hand and banish the elbow from the bra that's always a potential option and you can even go into Verte FR there so this line is very easily improved but this is the the basic version of it you'll notice there was even a secret effect of Brandon white being used here because we can reset it using shroud dragon from the graveyard so next is the kit combos kit in many ways is the same as Alaba since it's pretty much can do whatever Alaba can except you have to put back one card the only difference is that combos that require aler and kit can't use kit again right because they have to start with the kit um but in this combo that's not the case so we're just going to do the exact same line as we do with Al pellion which is this Bisal line here so here we're actually going to misplay the combo a little bit the way this is supposed to go this is a mistake in the spreadsheet after you neg get your marriage a with Ren brm that's going to trigger your Quin so you're also going to get to revive cesia here but in this combo we actually missed that so we just set the Branded in red but you're also going to have cesia on the field as well just like in the Alaba plus lellan combo right same as keepa plus lellan and same as Alaba plus lellan you know cesia on the field aresia on the field cesia is on the field and opening plus le bilion as well msan is of course true for Kit you have Ciana field 2o so instead of saying cut in the hand here this should be on the field um next is kit plusia this combo looks like this so because kit can search for any branded spellow trap it makes sense that you're going to use it in the same way that you do with Alaba now usually that is to search for High Spirits so that's exactly what we're going to do so this endboard has all the key pieces we have marij Jade quen albas in the graveyard branded loss and banishment for light and darkness Dragon um next is kit plus deployment was two discards this is going to be the same as alius deployment so again this has everything you need it has the brand Red quen alaz marij Jade branded lost and OAS grol as well next is kit plus branded Fusion we can see this ends on a very strong board here so this is pretty much the same line that you get in some keepa combos Right Where You banish mcua from your graveyard summon granino and then use branded sword to add back the Cartesian so this is a very similar line to those combos next is kit plus branded lost which ends on this board here yep so this is a very basic line but you do have a lot of what you need this is very winnable um and then we have the alternative version which is version two which can end on quen as well Plus renr so I actually like this combo a lot better you don't end with a a trap card to set but you do have quen miror Jade is live RN Brom is its own in the gate and then you have alas in the gray yet so by using Brandon and red and the end phase you're able to do this nice line here you will need Tuggle on if you be able to use the marage a so make sure you do that um next is kit plus strr Dragon plus two discards it says here that this is the same as coma 25 for okay so that's this combo we have everything we need here and then we have Kit plus foolish you can see this also the same as coma 27 the reason why a lot of these lines say that they're the same is because like I said alabra and kit are basically the same card in a lot of different context they just require one extra discard okay next is kit plus fullish plus two discards version two you see there's actually a few different versions of this okay so fairly straightforward and board we have marij Jade banishment and Al in the graveyard pretty good and then we have the last version which ends on miror Jade banishment branded l and a second spell trap which in this case is going to be branded kin but it could have cost be anything else it could be um branded in red or even like I guess yeah it could be Brandon and red you can enter any two that you choose to though and the combo goes like this so this is pretty good against the deck like um tempai for example although we don't have access to a recre lock which is what we really want versus tempai but we do have the means to negate a board breaket with bred King now next is kit plus gold sarcophagus [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is a strong board we have again access to everything and then we have Kit plus duplication plus three discard so this is a standard dup BL plus a basic one cut combo so this is going to look like this [Music] so you can see here that this is this consists of the basic one card combo where we go for the extended line so that we can access light spill casters that makes a location a one card luck and you can see this is where we need all three discards one for the kit which was our stter one forly belly in on our turn and now we need the third one here fully Bellion again we're going to get mcua as in the gate and we're going to shuffle back for sanctifier if we had one more Monster on the board we would have had to shuffle away either our cesia or our Quin for sanctifier so that we have room to activate it but we have room this time so we're going to recycle our gruol and we're going to put Al on on AAL and now here we have this basic setup where you have a mcua for any monster effect that might be problematic you have marriage age or any normal summon and you have actually the marade isn't isn't alive right now but you have mcua to deal with a potential normal summon and you have cesia into Furious dragon with the albon and Elbas to deal with backr so you have a luck for their entire combo and you also have the means to deal with whatever non- engine cards or problematic Grind game they might set up so this is really strong um next is Kit's High Spirits plus two discards [Music] so you can probably see a recurring pattern here it is pretty predictable at this point because they already have the High Spirits in the hand we can afford to set with albon and then go for the one card line where we use High Spirits in the end phase in extended combo but we also get to set a cut with Alia exactly how we use highp in some of the other lines when we don't draw it alongside a good discon next is kit plus Branden and white and this is the last kit combo that I have here and this combo looks like this you might be able to expect what this is at this point so this is very similar to how the combo with aliber and braded in white whats it's just one option we can access Titanic lead here I chose Titanic lead over albon you can of course do the same exact thing with albon triggering in the end phase um but when you summon albon you would have to not activate its effect I tend to think that qu's a little bit more valuable though um but if you had like a dark want to on the field u in your hand I should say B you could maybe consider sending albon instead because it's a little bit safer of a card I just think it's worthwhile getting and quen and cesia interpretation um so that's it for the the kid combos um in general like it says here they are just Ali combos but they do require one extra discount so for the most part that is what they end up being okay so this next one R Fusion plus lellan this is very similar to every lellan combo it's a Bisal line you don't actually need Ali to to do this line right you can still sumon Ren Brom and you can still banish the mcua with s the line plays out pretty much in a very similar way so it's the exact same end board we have Clen cesia miror Jade that's live windr is in a gate this grandal in the graveyard Al in the graveyard and branded red if you play a second mcua then you can search for it and if you don't play a second mcua then one alternative way of playing it instead would have been to actually send branded sword instead with the Seria so that you can get back the mcua and then instead of searching for shrouded with burned last you can search for kit and that would just require an extra disc card instead of instead of getting an extra drawer you would instead not have the stroll and you would have to give up another card but you would get your mccu effect uh so next is branded Fusion plus Saria this combo goes like this so because we didn't have a normal sumon we can actually go for tragedy with branded fusion and then search for Alaba and because we have sirenia the best way to search for a spell trap with Alaba is actually to go for heis Birds because Saria plus the trout Dragon which you can search is always going to pair up to make what other spell chap you want so you might as well get the free draw from shouted and thee resend with Titanic l or of Titanic l so that's going to access Quam in the end phase and we still get whatever spell cheat we want in this case it's going to be branded in red just like the regular branded Fusion one Club combo where we set branded in red and try to go for Chimera on the opponent's St except we also get a free quen with albz in the grave ad and a free drill as well brand of fusion poose deployment is next this combo looks like this so here on the end board we have quen alaz M Brandon red Grand can trigger for either a second quem or a despine citis we have two Brandon and red targets I guess three technically we have Al tragedy and also the Elbas so which Elbas with Ren BR but also so use branded in red whenever we want because we have other Target um this next combo branded Fusion plus lost this is branded Fusion plus lost plus one discard which looks like this so here on this end board we have again a similar thing you might have noticed a similar pattern here where we draw brand of fusion and we don't have a normal summon the idea is to search for a normal summon with tragedy that's probably the most important idea to take away from these branded Fusion Combos and we're going to search for aliber and that's going to get us the Branded in red because he had the last Hydra and it means that when we fuse that the Branded in red we're going to have a mcua s and we also have a way of getting albis into the graveyard because we use sh dragon on this done to set it then so this is a pretty good Bard we have more disruptions than what it looks like um and then there's another version here which is um the same the same requirement but we go for a different combo now we have branded Fusion on Tred this is a basic one cut combo but it just uses the shroud of dragon to put um albas Into the Grey good like we saw before you are going to use it first though because you might draw a card that helps you combo them a bit better so this is the basic board we have Alo we have n Jade we have Brandon and bread and if we wanted to we can go for the extended one cut combo with brand I would just brand a fusion while we activate Mir and instead we search for opening so that we can access cartesia that might be better if we want to go for like a reum Lu next we have the same combo again but with one disco so this actually allows us to go for a lot more this might be exactly what I just mentioned and then next we have branded fusion and foolish burial this endboard you might recognize it's very similar to combo 23.5 which is this one here but we have alabra and branded Fusion so it stands to reason that if you have branded fusion hyron and foolish which is just another copy of ala is the same thing as having ala and branded Fusion so this is going to be the exact same line that we've seen before the only difference is it's going to go through tragedy instead uh High drawing Alaba directly so again this combo has miror Jade Ren Brun Quan revive no alas yet but we can easily get it into the graveyard we have magn which is disruption we have CIA which could be used to make Rebellion as a way of shuffling or getting marade off the board so we can use cesia to fuse away mirade plus the albow that's going to trigger the Quan to revive the mirade and we can have lellan which can make something something else like a furious Dragon for example we have another vanished albas here um we won need to make room on the board but that's easier that's easy to do once our opponent St interacting with us we also have Brandon and red here which could Target tragedy at any time Brandon and red is a really good way of clearing monsters when you have too many because you could use two from your field for Chimera which is it's a really efficient way of disrupting your opponent you always want to be using two monsters so that's a good way of clearing Maybe maybe the qu she used it or the AL is not doing anything um another thing to consider I think like I said last time if you want to make light and darkness Dragon you could instead leave the Rebellion on the board you on the Magnum and instead just search or bounce the kit back to your hand um so that's that's a possibility as well um and then it's this is the exact same thing rusing plus sarcophagus gold is just another copy of alus so this should be the exact same line and again all of the same things apply um one other thing is that you should probably adjust the zones so that your Al goes where renr is that way you have this zone free for Ren from itself just because this is the anima Zone and you want to avoid that if possible it's a very insignificant Improvement but it is free so you might as well do it then we have a branded Fusion plus duplication this is another Rec L combo this is going to utilize a mirror effect so that you could access the leg spell cases this is the most important thing about any combo that includes duplication if you are playing a lock you really want to make sure you access those light spellcasters so here we special summon the tragedy to the field but it could also be anything else that's possibly in your's graveyard or indor graveyard depending on on what um your discards were or what else you have at hand um this is really strong it's pretty much a one card combo plus a duplication um next is High Spirits plus branded Pion so you can probably start to see the pattern in how these combos are constructed you can see that we don't have a target for High Spirits so it would make sense that we're going to activate mirror Jade to get to quam to get to C easier so that we can access our own High Spirits Target in the end phase and that's exactly how this combo was going to go notice that you actually don't activate the miror Jade Until the End phase itself this is just a way of playing around something like Karen from your opponent it's always a possibility that you you want to get as much information as you can um and then next we have branded Fusion plus branded in white which ends on this board here the Branded King like it says in the notes can be anything else but I I just like to set branded King when there isn't a target for anything else [Music] [Music] so the sunboard has everything it has quen cesia a marade ren Brun and a set albian is not a target for banishment which is why we don't set it um but you could set something like branded King it ends what your discard is if you have a discard that's like it's a target maybe an albz or something then you can set branded and red um that's it for the Branded Fusion combos branded Fusion in general it says that they don't often get access to Lost which is true you often don't get to lost because you don't have you don't make albon with a lot of these combos you often making L Bellion with branded Fusion in general though branded Fusion hbos don't look quite like this because you have a whole hand and the chances of not having a normal summoning brand would have pretty rare so most of the time you can have more to play with and that's when Brandon Fusion gets really crazy because you're going to have access to all of the rest of your combos plus a brand of fusion hard drawn which just extends through any hand trap for the most part and can end on the strong report um my next this is the heist burst combos these Heist burst ply Bellion this is a very standard combo this is very important so this is pretty much a one Cod line which goes into Al beond into rebell and deade but we also get access to quen because we we start up with High Spirits and we also get C easia back because we already had Rebellion so we got to send a different light monster with branded fusion and then you have pretty much the exact same combo here which is going to be exact same thing but you don't get access to cartesia because instead of sending cesia we're going to have to send Lillian [Music] [Music] yep so it's exactly the same combo except we don't have Cy um next is Heist birds and albad plus two discards so this is going to be a way of not using Heist spiritus to play around Ash and instead going for granite Fusion we are still going to play around rooll because if your first action is going to be Heist first then you might as well activate your cards in the draw phase you can see we're still in the draw phase we're going to search for Kit this is just a way of getting to branded fion and this is why we need so many disc cards one for kit and one for Rebellion from here we we're just going to go for the one card line and then this is going to be all we need because we have the quum in the end phase and access to our light and darkness Dragon through banishment so we have the banishment for the light and dness dragon the marade the quen alas is in the graveyard here because we discarded it with High Spirits this is everything we need um next this is technically a three card combo it's p Spirits plus albas plus any no more sumon and a discard this is and I'm generally avoiding three cut combos on the sweat sheet because it it would get way too complicated way too quickly and it would be kind of pointless to map them all out but this one I'm including because it is a a very special example so I've added Ash which is my normal Summit of choice it's just a completely useless card that can still be normal sum so we're going to spash summon the kit and it's important that we spash summon it because we're going to go for ver and we're going to make miror Jade this now plays around Ash and we're also going to get to send El Brandon em so the reason why we sent albian and not Titanic R is because after Verte resolves you CAU a special summon so there's no point going for quen it's much better to go for albon and just set something like branded and red alternatively we don't have to go for Branded lost right we can also search for something else um there's this line here for example so this combo ended on Brandon and red Plus cesia in the hand um yeah this is pretty pretty basic and next is he spirits and cesia plus two discards this is apparently a basic one cat combo but it also gets access to grol this is kind of how you play these hands that have nothing to do except activate High Spirits with a bad Target in hand this is basically the combo that you go over every time it's just going to be kit and hoping that your one up combo is enough yeah so we set banishment because we can still access light and darkness Dragon we have quen or cesio sorry in our hand and we do have quen once on a Cher's Gro um next is High Spirits and shrouded so shrouded is a highp target which is why you expect this combo to be pretty good and it is so this is a pretty basic full combo you have miror Jade the banishment again everything everything should be looking very similar if you think that all of these end BS are looking the same that's a good thing that means the deck is good that means the combos are doing what they're supposed to do um next is High Spirits and mcua this combo looks like this okay pretty basic Bond and then we have Hep po mura plus one discard this is a completely different combo um and it goes like this so this line is some ilar to some of the keep lines we've seen where we banish pesia and then add it back with branded sword so this is a pattern that you sometimes have to keep in mind that you can do this play if you're playing branded sword um next is High Spirits and Maximus this is going to be another example of what happens when you just draw High Spirits with a bad Target so it's pretty much just a one card combo um and if you have a spellcaster is your target then at least you get gruol in the graveyard which does give you access to quen on the opponent's turn keeping in mind also that you don't have the option of going for the extended line because you've already activated High skirts so you can't go for the clan cesia line you have to settle for this basic line um and then we have High Spirits plus magnate this is another highp one C combo but this time we have a good Target which is a dark dragon so Maga this is going to be the exact same combo for any dark dragon like Bal Drake or dry swam as well s is a basic line except we get qu are free as well because we have Titanic lead um that's it for the High Spirits combos these do get a little bit more complicated when you start adding in High Spirits plus X card on top of other combos so when you have like a normal summon as well as a heist PR combo that's when your turns can start getting really crazy but obviously this spreadsheet is just going through the the basic combos so here the heper can play around ash a lot by going for Verte this is true but it usually requires more than the basic cards if all you have is High Spirits and one other card it's often not right to go ver um which is why a lot of these lines don't do it next we have some deployment combos so this is deployment plus alz there there's a lot of different versions here see we' have it's a version four um a first one I'll show you just looks like this it really depends on the situation what the best option to go for with this hand is um because it's not actually a good play you can't full combo with elas and deployment you can summon cesia and you could just make sanctify and pass which is sometimes the best play if you're going to get Max seed on your CIA this can be the best play um often you will just pass on the cesia as well um and against certain matchups this could easily be the right play too or with certain cards in the hand this could be the right play um but another option is to go for Mir Aid and cesia in hand so this is a way of guaranteeing access to marriage Aid and the reason you activate the branch of Doom Bread on your turn in the end phase is so that you're playing a ro C by the grave um which would otherwise stop the Branded that so you're going to do it on your turn this is pretty much just marate pass so it's pretty weak but sometimes it's Superior to sanctifier pass now and then third version here is Grand good plus quen plus Alas and GRE was cesia in the hand so this is technically in the strongest way all of your deceptions was all this is technically the strongest way of resolving it so the reason you search for High Spirits in the end phase by sending it to the gray head is because there's no other good um C sent you can send which a bean but there's no branded spell yet you can send um another albow which you already have one you can send branded sword but there's nothing banished so the best cut send is honestly just a High Spirits you can't activate this immediately in the end phase because you nor use one effect but um you generally could just get this for fall right just generate Advantage the way that this combo is going to interrupt your opponent is you can either revive alaz of Quin this got aard diffuse away an opponent's dark monster and then discard the High Spirits to make meridy um and in the fourth option here the pl for alas this is um a special line for when you're playing Ecclesia so it relies on Ecclesia and lul one left being in your deck which is not something that you should have usually but if they are in your deck if you're playing a special version of branded then this combination of cards actually sets up for what is essentially full combo so you're going to summon Ecclesia on the opponent's turn or on your end phase with Lulu and then on the aon's turn you can actually activate Ecclesia to speci a summon alvas from your deck so as a quick effect you're going to summon albas which is going to be a way of fusing away an opponent's monster that's one disruption you're going to summon marade the marade can Now activate but but if your opponent plays into the grand GLE you can also bring out quen and if you do this first before activating the marage Jade then you can guarantee a trigger of quen as well we're going to send High Spirits here because we don't need anything else now while we activate the mirror Jade that's disruption number two it's going to trigger the Quan to revive the cesia now we can activate renum revived elz we've already activated elz so we can't fuse again but by putting it on the board we can now fuse it away for cesia that's going to summon albian albian can then banish both albas for furious which is disruption number three and then we also have albon in the end phase aesia in the end phase High Spirits in the end phase and Ecclesia in the end phase all activating and adding cards to your hand so this is pretty much full combo plus three disruptions on your opponent's turn um and and then there's also this the planman plus any dark monster technically does a very similar thing so this this replay is also going to show you how to disrupt on your opponent's 10 so that's exactly the same except we didn't need to draw Al directly we just had VRI right any random dark monster and then there's also abil here when we draw a light monster so it is capable of making the exact same thing except instead of furious we are going to go from lellan into another marriage Aid the reason being we don't have another dark dragon um we do need a lot of discards I've not shown for these replays the discards um these deployment lines I've not shown the discards but you do need quite a lot um and then next we have another line which is deployment at any light or darkart was so this is again one of these Ecclesia lines again you don't do these in regular branded and unless you're playing Ecclesia sometimes I've actually played Ecclesia just so that I have access to this so the deployment is essentially a strong play by itself so this is going to be the exact same we're going to disrupt in the same ways and this time we're going to send the golden salur the Golden salur is able to trigger to revive cesia at any time so we don't need to rely on quen which means we can use P again to make a second copy of marade or can use out of the same marriage Aid and we're also going to make dragon stellia so this is technically more disruption than the previous options and we do so by using the golden saltol this is what allows us to disrupt this many times um and then back to what you can do in a regular branded deck without Ecclesia deployment plus cesia looks like this so this is again the same end board that we made before where we leave the elbows in the graveyard we go for the Quin the followup and the grand P this is the strongest highest ceiling way of playing this in practice this is probably what you're going to have to do um but depending on what the cards in your hand are it could easily be better to make sanctifier or marage it directly um next is deployment plus lellan plus one discard this is a way of getting to um actual combos so we're going to resolve branded Fusion this time um but we get there through accessing BR Fusion through the graveyard so this is something that you see a lot we our opponent starts with cesia or you start with cesia and then we use Grand Ginia to access brand of Fusion from the graveyard and then we're going to do a basic one p combo that's why we need this discard and we also have grbo up here as well in addition so we have the basic line plus access to cesia and access to quen um next is deployment gler this is the exact same line the only difference this time is that we actually there's there's no difference um the difference in the previous line you may have noticed that we sent another copy of lellan um this time we have to send the lellan because we don't have access to it so we need the way of sending the albian to the graveyard yeah so you can see we have the lellan here we don't have another lellan in the gray gu whereas in the previous line we have add another one so see here it says sending the second lilion is redundant if you're playing golden so solo fairy tale snow or some other light monster you could send that the second C here is also not a bad idea either and deployment post tragedy this is another one of my favorite combos you can see that this surprisingly ends on full combo out of nowhere which I think is really cool [Music] [Music] yeah so this is full combo we have Mary Jade gram gal quen alib in the great banishment lost from AA and we have well C in the hand we had everything next is deployment plus shrouded so this is not a difficult line to play but it is very you have to recognize right away that you need to chain your cesia to deployment so instead of activating shroud at first you're going to summon deployment a summon with deployment if you're only playing one cesia then this helps to take out Cy from your debt so that you're not going to draw it that would make the deployment redundant um but more importantly it's actually because if you don't have any other the light dark monsters even then I want to activate the shrouded to send retribution and the chain so that you can use its body as material for gral this is going to send s here which is going to PA with the the shrouded and you're going to get to Brand diffusion and then next we have deployment plus duplication so this is showing that duplication can actually Target Fusion deployment not just branded Fusion so if you do open a brick where you have deployment and nothing to do with it and the duplication you can do this play technically still leads to a few disruptions on the opponent's turn you going a banish de ployment to someone Alves that's going to make Mar that's going to make grol which is going to send for a bunch of followup you get quem which can technically ride the mirror Jade and you going to get this in the end phase as well as this in the end phase as well as this in the end phase pretty good um also this in the end phase too um and that's it for the deployment Compass um if you draw Cuts easier directly things actually get a little interesting this is one of my favorite combos here um if you draw cesia plus Alber there's a very nice line you can go for that plays around Ash and also reum locks your opponent so the reason why we're going to normal summon the elow and then spat summon the cesia is because if our cesia gets imped here we can still make Verte whereas if we were to normal some in the cesia and then we got imped we don't have the option of going for ver but we're going to make Al on here and that's going to make gruol which is going to send our requin now because we haven't activated branded Fusion or deployment we' got locked ourselves into fusions we can just link summon go for marriage Aid actually we're going to go sanctify yeah we're going to go sanctifier because we have racan so we're going to want to s that to our opponent's field and that's why we're sending quen going to set branded in red because we have alz as a Target and then on the opponent's turn we can put the quam on our field the rim on their field it's um it's pretty good next we have cesio plus Alber this is version two so this is an alternative way of playing my this is for when we don't have a requium in the deck or we don't want a requium walk our opponent we can also go for this line instead [Music] so here we have what looks like marade pass um the reason we searched for shrouded to draw a card and then saw it at by cesia is just so that we can get resources into play there's no reason to search my Courier now because but then a renr revived alaz and then such from a Korea on aan time because they have branded in Red so it's really easy a fuse um so this is this is decent we have the gral summ quen it's a lot stronger than it looks if you're not playing a Rec and luck this is the best thing you can do with cesia and elth um next is cesia and lellan so this is pretty much a a full combo we just don't get access to quen that's the only thing we're missing here although we are going to end on gr also so we kind of do have access to quem yeah so this is a basic cesia start where we're going to pair shrouded with sirenia to excess branded Fusion from the graveyard and from there it's just going to be a one cut combo so if you wanted to technically you could search for High Spirits and then go for the a line where we activate the marage a send Titanic CL someone quen highp in the end phase to revive the Clen it would just require a second copy of grah corala the extract um next is cesia and CERN this is again the exact same thing we're going to access branded Fusion through the graveyard yep so this is the exact same end board next we have cesia and shrouded puzzle Discord so you can see that this is also ending on the exact same board reason for this is well cut easier with shrouded or cesia with Serenia is pretty much the same thing gral can send the other half regardless of which one it is so it TS to reason that they should be the same combo again you just need to make sure that you chain the cesia instead of drawing a card so it's a really basic one card line plus access to grandino and then we have kzia plus tragedy this is also technically the same thing um you have to use tragedy's second effect and not its first effect so if you have access to tragedy and cesia but you have to normal summon the cesia then you can go for this this line we activate gral use Ser to send branded fusion and then reset branded fusion with tragedy just to clarify here remember the tragedy is only one effect go 10 so that's why you can't search you have to decline this search and then you have to use this effect later if you search it's not going to do anything because Al of the normal summon you've already summoned cesia um from here though it's just a normal one card line you're going to end on the same board and that's it for the caresia combos so it says here that combos is using cesia as the normal suen usually get to brand of fusion using wed fion and that's what we saw it's exactly what we said this is how C it can be a starter sometimes but the end board clearly you can see are very often not as much as what some of the other combos end on which is why cesia is a starter but it's not a really good St the combos don't actually end on that much and then we have a couple of miscellaneous combos here this is just an important combo to know lellan plus any normal summon so you can go for a ver line using mellion this is something you should always recognize with lellan this is a specialism this is a way of putting a body onto the board without locking yourself into fusions so when you see rebellion in your hand you should be thinking about v as a possibility often it's not going to be your priority number one and if you don't have any other way to play like if your hand is just full of Ash blossoms and Max se's then this is what you're looking at right you're looking at birday and if you do have any other way to play but you get hand trapped then she'll be looking at the little Bellion thinking okay I can make a birthday now that's that's how you should be looking at this card so in this hand for example even to use it you going to get magn and you're going to banish the lellan to summon the Magnum and then it's just rote which is just marine and then in the end phase you're going to get Saria this is going to be a follow this is going to allow to send retribution to get back the brandid fusion it's also your discard for albas too um next is the belly and end tragedy it's combo orus so this is basically the exact same idea we're going to use Li Bellion as an extender to make a berting but because we're normal summoning specifically tragedy which has a graveyard effect we get a slightly stronger and board we going to such s at this time that's so that we can send something to the graveyard that we can reset with tragedy in this case it's going to be branded King but it could also be branded and Brad that's also fine too next we have shrouded plus branded in red plus one discard you can see this end board here is just miror Jade which is the purest and Bor of all it is simply um it is simply gear because it's easy to overlook this possibility so if you have exactly sh dragon and a disc card and a branded in red and no other playable hand or no other playable cards in your hand one option to consider instead of just drawing a card and seeing what happens is to actually use the shout dragon in a guaranteed Way by sending Elbas and the chaining brand to Red while you have have the dark body in your hand as material that you can use for the Bellum now you have at least guaranteed miror Jade um you don't get to draw a card but you taken away the risk of drawing another break because then you would be in a really bad position at least this way you have mirade um and now very similarly um there is this as well which is shroud Dragon plus a useless branded spell trap so let's say you have a hand like this you can't combo with the albn on its own the ash does nothing and the Branded lost does nothing what you can do is draw a card and see what happens but a safer way to play it is to summon the albon from the hand so that you can make a birthday like this you've at least guaranteed miror Jade and whenever you're making birte you're guaranteeing marade and a ren Brom play providing you have another card in hand and then there's also shed P dup this is again the same idea um I've said this in as the notes so all of the combos this is just considering whether you want to draw a card or if you have a way of using the shroud of dragon in a in a better way a more guaranteed way so in this case we're just going to send the Branded Fusion a draw card and if it's still a brick then we can go for Branded Fusion on the opponent's turn with duplication we caught luck with rum like we normally do because we don't have access to night spellcasters so we're just going to go for followup which she's sending tragedy to search for Alaba and then we end on marid this is on the opponent's term in a situation like this if you drew with Tred and you drew into a playable card like alab or Quan more opening it's the end of the world to have branded Fusion in the gra it's very easy to get to for example watch aan in the grard to get it back if you draw alra you could just search for opening sumon quen send retribution get back to branded Fusion it's really really simple to get it back so don't be afraid of sending this to the graveyard to make better use of a duplication um one other miscellaneous combo is another three cut combo this is keeper plus mcua plus albas and a discard so you can see this actually ends on a really really good board um and actually has another really nice quality which is that it plays around Ash so if you specifically have UA alz and keeper you have access to a really cool play that goes like this you going to discard the albas you going to get branded Fusion but before activating it you can use keepy the second effect to revive the albas and then you're going to use them into alenes so if you're playing this as a way of beating tempai or just because it's good in the format in the future at any other time then this is an option that you have available if you draw it you wouldn't ever play this just so that you can do this combo because this is very spe uh very specific you need very specifically mcua and keeper and the hard dra albas um but if you have this exact setup then you do get to do this Alba lens display plus mcua which is now a monster neate right so you can now beat Ash on brandan and from here is just going to be a basic combo that looks like this however it's not that basic and because we're going to banish mcua right so we're going to get to se for cesia still had Al in the graveyard here because we had a second one and then we're going to sh beat alitus for Rebellion because this is a dark dragon it's level eight um so now we need a way getting Alon into the graveyard but that's fairly straightforward we have cesia I'm going to summon the cesia and that's going to let us clear away our albian the reason we search for an albz is because there's nothing else to search wait we could search for shrouded to try and draw a card which is fine I guess but having alabas for the Aon of Stan because we are going to revive this cesia so it's it's probably better to have an Alis we're going to get mccu back because of branded sword and we're going to set banishment to play around or to allow us to get to light and dark a dragon we also get to se feas and deployment which is um aalen's grave yet effect right this can add poly or a fusion spell and that can be Fusion to Planet so this board is really really strong we have access to everything we have so much more followup than usual um we even played out Ash next we have cesia plus branded lost plus any light or dark monster this is another three code combo but it's important to show because um this is a special way of playing if you draw cesia and branded lost plus any useless monster D to to fuse with like a b Drake for example what could be a magnum um you could still will access branded Fusion because Grand gr is going to access one half and then the Branded lost is going to access the other half search for shrouded and send s it has to be this way around you can't search with Sania of course um but you can send it and then search for shrouded Dragon so the only thing to be careful here is your chain links make sure you know which card is search and which and from here it's just going to be a one cut combo but my access and granded Pion from the grave yet okay and then another combo that I think is important to point out is what happens if you draw those Lu Bellion and another bestial um you can actually make use of a rare effect which is where you summon the belly in from the hand so you can still actually make Verte in a hand like this that's just full of Bisal even without a normal summon you can get you can get two bis onto the board one of them is summon normally and then the second L Bellion can actually summon itself from the hand going to be able to send a retribution here the retribution is important um now you can summon the second visal and now you have your two bodies for Verte which can make the Verte can now Fusion summon into marriage a and the retribution is important because we're been suchan and the reason we suchan over shrouded is because shrouded is the same as quen but quum has lasting effects on the opponent's T so you can argue depending on your hand whether a draw would be better but I like such quam you still have normal summon after we use ver we can still normal summon it's only special summons which we're locked out of so we can still summon quam use the effect to send branded and red and then add it back to a h we also get to search with Magnum up in the end phase which is going to be this albas as a wayers having a discard and an extra dark monster in in play so that we can make better plays with Brandon over it you could realistically add um a different card a different Dragon like keepa so that you have three different names available for chimer that is also something to think about next we have um a few grass combos so grass of course is not a guaranteed combo you can actually do nothing with grass very often you can sometimes complete a break and do nothing um but grass can often do a lot by itself so I've got three different examples of how you can play with just grass so the first situation looks like this and what I've going to done is ADD myself a discard and a second discard and a third discard just in case we need them um we're not going to guarantee that we need these but we could possibly use them right we never know what grass is going to Mill so here we're going to mail 20 different cuts um this is the most likely thing that you're going to Mill right because you're going first and you draw grass and your opponent is playing a 40 card deck so if you're playing a 60 card deck you got a mill 20 cards and in this situation you can see that we know tragedy albon Saria mcua aesia High Spirits Alaba these are things are kind of looking for the belly in as well um the main thing you're looking for is a retribution pair so you're looking for a shrouded and a Serenia as a way of getting branded tusion from your grood if you mail the brand of fusion itself and you only need to look for one of them and then you can add it back and then you also need to check if you've mailed all of your elbow in this case we haven't we haven't melt any and if we don't have a normal summon in our hand then we can strongly consider activating tragedy to search for an HRA if there's one left in our deck or even quen and the last thing to then consider is if we do have a normal summon or if we n our best spells and traps maybe we want to not use the tragedy to surch and instead just use it to reset um in this exact hand this is how we're going to play it out we're going to choose to not search with tragedy but we do search with tragedy sorry we search for quen and quen is going to be able to send branded sword on summon so that means we can banish the mcua and then easily add it back so what we're going to do is use shrouded to send retribution just going to add back the Branded Fusion which we sent with seren now we're going to send Maximus and albas with branded Fusion for albian this is the wi we quen by the way we don't need to search for Alaba because qu is better you have C in the graveyard which we can revive so we're going to make use of quen's both effects and from here we're going to combo pretty effectively we have access to everything we need we can search for Kit which we didn't know we go to marade we can get back AA so that we don't Dieu bring out branded lost use the kit now I can get access to branded and white it will keep fusing because they have more albas in the graveyard wein a fuse with an alas from our hands so that we can get one back into the grard this is important because as always we want to end with albas in the graveyard if possible and we also and um sent reum with grand grol because we have access to it we're going to make sanctifier that br of King this now negates cold by the grain so we can very easily very easily wreck we and block our opponent we intentionally left one zone free so that we can summon with sanctifier and we can negate cold by the grave you have mcua marij Jade it's a lot um and it's just all from just grass the next example of the grass goes like this this one is a little bit weaker but it's still a very strong showing for grass so in this line we ended up Milling our branded lust which is why we weren't able to end on it but we were still able to access a whole bunch of fusions like marade as well as jelia and Furious we got our on the gate we got gr cesia this is everything we could need Le even M recum so on the opponent's term we can easily re walk our opponent um and then a third example of grass is like this this one is also pretty strong and this time we maill less than 20 cards because sometimes not all of your opponents are going to be playing 40 card decks sometimes they will have slightly over especially in mastle so this time we're only going to mail um 18 Cuts so this would be a 42 card deck from our opponent we still have access to everything though branded Fusion plus retri is all you need now we're going to add back kit which we banished as our dark monster for lellan with a set from AA and then we get Quam in the end phase send alaz and we get to set branded in red we're not setting banishment because we M it and we also we also have reamir we have grol for aidas or second Quan our B is in the graveyard we have solot be opening protection W strong board from just grass and then the next thing here I have is just an Aliva one card otk this is an important combo to know and if your opponent ever passes turn going first and you have Al and you want to play around niru and odk your opponent this is how you're going to do it so Titanic lad's effect gains attack equal to the levels of the monsters which in this case is going to be rebellion and Elbas so that's 12 levels and you gain 100 for each so it's 3700 which is exactly what you need a lethal um and then the next two combos here the last two that I'm going to show at the moment um we're going to skip over this FLIR gate combo section and they also look at these later on as well um I want to show these draon combos because some people think draon is good and branded and it is okay so I'm going to show you some examples of how to use it so this is with deployment and branded Fusion if you remember the regular deployment plus branded Fusion combo and what that ends on this is the Jon version so you done the summon Dron using the light hexal fusion and then in the end phase we're going to add albas to our hand going to add cesia to a hand going to add branded opening to the hand this is important we needed to use opening to search for Brandon and Brad because we needed the dark monster for lellan now we're going to get to M marade and is going to revive the cesia for the opponent's time so there's a lot of play in the end phase here but the upshot of this combo is that we have quen gruel marij Jade and most importantly draon in the G it's relatively weak compared to what you normally get um you notice there's no alas um I've already used gruol so at here is kind of limited we have Mary Jade and quen but no discard of a dracoon it's um it's a good combo but it's not it's probably not better than the regular deployment plus um branded Fusion combo or Alaba combo we had um oh no it was the it was brand INF fusion um and this next one is Al post deployment this one looks like this so in the previous line we had to access a dark monster in our end phase through opening this time we don't need to do it so it stands to reason that this should actually be a little bit stronger of a combo we're still going to send the light hex sealed fusion and we're still going to summon draon and then we're going to go for very similar lines where we're going to play in the end phase of Brandon and red adding kzia first so that we have our discard adding alas first and then we're going to banish into marid this is going to revive the qu of cesia so we've actually ended on the exact same board still no albow in the graveyard but we have we have the same board right and it's just as strong as the previous one leaning a little bit too much into the negate in my opinion I think that it's it's probably better to just go for the regular Line alra Post deployment ends on a lot more than this um so you should consider that strongly when deciding if if you want to play draon or not and that's it so we're going to skip over the flu comos for now and the desia comos for now I'm going to come back to these later there's a whole section on Floodgate so we're going to go over these combos then um so the B of this s she uh remember the most important combos the idea is not to memorize all of these I need just to keep in mind the general patterns that you see remember the one card line is very important it comes up a lot I remember the different patterns that you see um with activ marade going for an extended line and then using High Spirits in the end phase remember the differences with keeper and how you can sometimes revive albas to your field which allows you to summon Ren Brom and make a lot stronger of an nboard like this one um remember that Nadia basically does its own thing after any other combo and kit is just Ali but minus one card branded Fusion typically searches a normal summon by sending tragedy High Spirits also goes really nicely with another combo with a normal summon and deployment generally doesn't do much on its own you need a very specific way to play if you're starting with cesia then you're going to get to Brand Fusion from the graveyard and yeah remember the remember the basics so it's about looking for patterns it's about looking for what you expect from your combo um yeah so that that's it for the spreadsheet Let's uh let's move on to the next section the first hand trap we're going to talk about is Ash Blossom Brandon is famous for being weak against this card as it can negate your very important branded Fusion it's the only real hand trap that can negate branded Fusion where it is what makes it one of Brandon's main weaknesses Ash is also one of the most popular hand shs in the game so naturally playing around this card is important the first and simplest way to beat Ash bossom is to just draw your Els to it called by the grave and C of design can both just negate Ash Blossom so if you draw one of these in a hand like this you don't need to worry about doing anything fancy to play around Ash when it comes to cross out specifically you do need to have a copy of Ash in your deck in order for it to work if you're playing cross out to begin with then you're probably playing Ash in your list however you do still need to make sure that you didn't draw all of your copies especially if you're playing just one copy as a target for cross out another card you could draw that works similarly to cold by and cross out against Ash is thrust thrust won't negate Ash but it will let you set Fusion duplication which would allow you to resolve a branded Fusion on the opponent's T this is nowhere near as powerful as resolving it on your own ter however it's a lot better than nothing and if you have some other stuff on your end board then it can easily be enough to win the game duplication provides disruption as well as followup for your next turn if you happen to draw a Thrust as well as cold by a cross out then there's no conflict here as you can still use the cold by or the cross out on the Ash and then still resolve the thrust later on as called by and cross out only negate effects not activations one thing to keep in mind about using thrust to play through Ash is that the Branded Fusion has to be in your graveyard a fusion dup application to work so if your opponent ashes something besides branded Fusion like aliber or foolish burial and you aren't able to access the Branded Fusion then it's actually a more effective Ash than if they just waited until branded Fusion most opponents won't do this though as it is very risky so overall drawing thrust or the duplication itself is a pretty reliable way of pushing through Ash the next thing I want to mention is branded lost some players mistakenly believe that branded lost protect your branded Fusion from Ash Blom this is not true since branded lost only protects your cards from having the activations negated but Ash Blossom only negates effects no activations if branded loss could be used to C Ash Blossom it would be a staple for you in every branded deck and the Hanzo you don't draw it with direct out to Ash there are some interesting lines you can go for to play around it as I showed in the combo section there are a lot of lines that don't use branded Fusion and instead go for Verte vert's effect cannot be ashed which is what allows it to play around Ash really well most opponents will always try to hold their Ash for Branded fusion and they won't realize you're going for a ver line until you summon it an example of a good ver line would be ala plus Alat as shown in the combo section this line surges for High Spirits with ala instead of branded Fusion in order to do a birday line you need to have a way of special summoning a second link material in addition to your normal sumon which is one of the reasons why High Spirits is so commonly associated with these lines High Spirits can search for Kit which can then special summon itself from the hand you can also get a second link material using the Bal Rebellion if you want to play around Ash with this hand for example then you can go for a ver line like this and then there's also cesia which can be used to summon out a second link material as well if you wanted to play around Ash at this hand by making ber you could do it by special summoning the C easia there are other cards which can special summon moners to your field like deployment and opening however these Cuts don't help you make Verte since they both have Fusion looks in general Verte lines end with weaker end boards than regular combos so choosing to go for them can be risky they aren't weak though necessarily if you look at this end board from the basic Al post albas combo you can see that it has mired rounded in red and albas in the graveyard which which can be revied with RRM and also branded last which can search formera there at least four disruptions potentially more something to be aware of when going with Verte lines is that once your opponent sees you've summoned Verte they now know that they don't need to hold the ash for Branded Fusion which means if they do actually have Ash then anything you activate from that point on that can be Ash could realistically get ashed this is most likely going to be your albon trigger in the end phase but it could also be something like a branded L trigger after you was all ver this is important as it can make your endboard weaker and might make a difference to whether or not you think the line is worth going for if your end board is not strong enough then it doesn't matter if you play it around hand chaps you might just lose to your opponent's engine cards anyway another small thing you can do to play around Ash better is use High Spirits to send Albi onto the graveyard rather than Titanic lead most regular combos prefer to send Titanic lead since if branded Fusion resolves you're going to have access to albon as well anyway however in the cases where you get ashed on branded Fusion you won't have access to that Alan which means you don't get its end phase effect if setting something like Brandon red is a stronger play after getting ashed that summoning quen in the end phase is then it's going to be favorable for you to have that albon triggering rather than the Titanic lead so if you are concerned about Ash you can consider sending albon in place of Titanic lead this only matters in regular combos not ver lines since ver lines will always play out Ash and it will also always send albon since V's effect locks you out of special something for the rest of the tent making Titanic lab pretty useless this hand is an example of a time where you could send a potentially redundant albon in an attempt to play around Ash better something else you can do when playing around Ash or any hand up for that matter is to try and read your opponent's toggles for ash bosson specifically this is actually pretty easy if your opponent has the turgle set to Auto then you can pretty quickly detect an ash Blossom from them a lot of cards can be ashed and branded but not all of them which means if they only have a response to the cause that can be ashed it's pretty safe to assume that they have Ash cards like the Bellion aliba shrouded High Spirits deployment at opening can all be Ash and cards like gesia gold sock and kits effect a special summon itself all cannot be ashed Ash also wouldn't show a toel on the resolution of any effect and he wouldn't show a tel on the summon of a monster either not every hand is going to allow you to do this and not every opponent is going to have their tble set to alter the whole time but it's worth paying attention to when it does come up sometimes it's possible to draw a hand that is so powerful it can beat Ash Blossom by just powering through it a hand like this for example can actually do a lot even after getting asked on your branded Fusion you could consider playing around Ash by going for some kind of ver line here but you don't have to because of how strong the endboard will be after the ash Blossom anyway it's also possible to have a hand like this which has no good options for playing around Ash if your bind of fusion gets ashed here the best you can do would be to summon gruol and hope that it alone will be strong enough to survive the opponent's turn in some rare cases you can actually set up an aate for ash Blossom before activating branded Fusion in regular branded this can only come in the fall of mcua although in other variants of branded there could be other options like draon for example this combo which was also shown in the combo section makes use of alol litus to make mccu alive before activating branded Fusion the Endo is pretty strong and it was safely done while being immune to Ash Blossom this is also something that can come up a lot when you draw grass as you're able to add back branded in white Bish mcua and then add the mcua back to your hand with branded sword before going for Branded Fusion one thing about searching for High Spirits with alab is that you can sometimes bait your opponent into ashing the High Spirits if you don't have any other way to get to branded Fusion then you don't want your opponent to Ash your High Spirits but if you do actually have another way to get to branded Fusion afterwards then you would be happy for them to Ash the heis birds in these situations I like to play with my opponent's mind a little bit by changing how long I spend resolving El's effect if you think for a long time before searching High Spirits your opponent might get suspicious that you are trying to play around Ash Blossom and so they might be more likely to actually just use their Ash on the High Spirits in contrast if you take no time at all to resolve Aliva your opponent is more likely to believe that you already have branded Fusion in heart it's a small thing and it doesn't always work but it doesn't hurt so it's something to keep in mind there are a lot of times where you can choose to not play around Ash Blom even though you have the means to one example would be if you know for a fact that your opponent is not playing Ash this isn't something that's ever really going to matter on the rank letter but if you're playing in a tournament where you know your opponents or it's game two or three of a best of three match or any other way that you could otherwise know the information that your opponent doesn't have Ash then you can go ahead and just not respect it this is something that actually comes up a lot at the top of the rated ladder as well as plays very often play against the same opponents over and over there are also sometimes decks like 60 card Decks that typically don't play Ash blossom in the list so depending on what is popular in the C format you could make an educated guess about whether your opponent is playing Ash based on the number of cards in the deck another time where you can reasonably conclude that your opponent doesn't have Ash is if you're going second and you successfully resolve Maxi on your opponent's turn one if they had Ash they'd probably use it to negate your Maxi so when it comes to your turn you don't ever have to play around Ash and then the last thing to consider if playing around Ash is with gamma gamma can be a good card in branded so if you're playing it and you draw it going first you can try to set it up so that you activating branded Fusion the S putting any monsters on the board that way you can use it to negate the ash if your opponent has it m of hands can do this since you normally need to use your normal summon to access branded fusion and gam is limited to one now anyway but theoretically this is a possibility anyway that's it for playing around Ash Blossom so let's move on now to Maxi so next is Maxi this is another big weakness of branded although it's usually not a complete death sentence when it resolves like it is for a lot of other decks again the simplest way to beat Maxi is to just draw your ALS to it cold by cross out as well as Ash bossom will help Maxi there's also gamma but again this card is limited to one so you're probably not playing this anymore then there's also Frost which is also a good card to count to Max C as it adds a lot of extra power to your end board without giving any drills to that Maxi in the case of using cold by the graay specifically you never need to worry about your own Maxi being useless afterwards because branded doesn't really need Maxi for his endb to win the game you can easily just use out dead Maxi as a disc cut when Maxi is chained to your branded fusion and you have no out to it the best thing to do is usually just to summon sanctifier Dragon this gives one draw to your opponent and sanctifier can can Revive albas on the opponent's turn which could potentially feas into a merit it's a decent amount of disruption for the price of just one draw for mixi sometimes it's also worth it to push further by special summoning one more time just to set up one more disruption if you have a cesia in your hand for example or a kit or even a deployment that you haven't used yet then it can be often worth it to give one more draw if you're going to be setting up one more disruption there are also some situations where you can completely play into Mex giving lots of draws knowing that you're probably going to win anyway because you have the means to set up a Floodgate reliably it's usually very risky gong for this since there's a good chance that You' going to lose your flot gate or cold by the grave or droplets on your sanctifier so it's best to only go for this if you have some means of providing reliability this could be with branded King to the gate drop that's are called by or it could be by ciling branded loss and summoning The Floodgate during a branded lost window that way you're immune to cold by and droplets this hand for example can reliably set up a Floodgate under maxi like this something else to remember is that if you are playing a Floodgate that can be accessed by gruol a grean you can set up that whole luck in just two special summons assuming that you have a normal summon which can search for Branded Fusion your branded Fusion summons sanctifier and then cesia either Spates some as herself from the hand or gets someone from the deck with deployment cesia can use its effect on the opponent's town which can send the FL gate to the graveyard is sets up the luck with just two draws from XE this is usually preferable to playing all the way into Maxi and trying to set up a flp gate reliably like we just saw however it is more vulnerable to cause like C by and droplets like with Ash Blossom Maxi has a pretty distinctive tble if your opponent is on auto Maxi could be chained to anything or in the summon of any monster and if your opponent is tled on the Maxi could also be used on the resolution of anything as well if you see this tuckle pattern from your opponent then you can be pretty comfortably sure that they have Maxi it could also be a lot of other cards and it is worth keeping them in mind however by far the most likely option is that it's just Maxi one thing you can do to prepare better for Maxi is to save your Fusion deployment until after using branded Fusion most opponents are going to chain their Max SE to deployment so if you want to then someone sanctifier you're going to have to give your of Le two drills If instead you hold the deployment until after using brat of fusion you can then choose to not use it at all if your opponent has Maxi this does play harder into other hand traps like imp pom although it's worth playing it like this if you have a specific reason to believe that your opponent has Maxi for example because of their toggles another way to prepare for Maxi is to send albon to the graveyard with High Spirits in place of Titanic L Titanic is usually good because it can special summon qu from the deck if you end phase but under maxi that's going to give your Aon a droll whereas Albi On's effect to set branded in red or Brandon King or branded banishment won't give any draws another thing to keep in mind is that branded opening doesn't have dispatch a summon it can also add to your hand if your opponent chains Mexi to opening you can consider denying them any draw At All by choosing to add with opening instead of summoning you can still normal summon whatever you add so it's not as if you're really wasting anything by doing this this is also true for cesia as well since cesia is a quick effect if your opponent ever uses Maxi you can consider chaining cesia in order to deny them the wandro so that's it for playing against Maxi the truth is Maxi is pretty annoying no matter what just as it is for most de a maxi can be especially annoying if they also have another copy on their own turn so next is infinite impermanence in general this card is not a huge problem for Branded the only time where imput can really be devastating is what it's used on Ali or any of your Ali substitutes like keeper and kit when it's used as a starter if you don't have any other way to play after that then that impon was extremely affected again the simplest way to beat imp is just to have cross out this time thrust isn't a very good card as it isn't made live by imper and you also can't use cold by on an imper either the typical way to play around imper branded is to summon cesia before normal summoning Al this allows you to chain cesia effective Fusion summon in response to the inut you can then fuse away the Ala or whatever the inom target is in order to still resolve its effect this is why you should pretty much always use deployment to some cesia they fall going for any of your other players especially your normal Simmon eventually you're going to want to use the cesia at some point during your combo so you will then have to be giving up on the protection from inut however but it won't be until after you've resolved all of your good Ino targets like rebellion albon and potentially even the bestial Rebellion as well other than your normal suon the best imper Targets in your regular combos are albon and rebellion in particular it can be effective to imper lellan over albon since in most standard combos albon is going to banish albas from your graveyard and the lellan is going to discard a card for cost this means that it's usually more impactful to imp Bellion rather than Al it's not just deployment that can get cesia onto your field before your normal Summit it is also possible to summon cesia from your hand using its own effect this end for example can go out of its way to play around imp by setting up cesia before summoning Alaba can then benefit from the tting protection that cesia provides up until after youve resolved all of your important effects in a similar way to how cesia plays around imperum you can also play around it with branded in red and super pulling both of these cards can as a quick effect remove your El from the field in order to dodge an impa it's pretty difficult to use super Poly on time one but if you're going second this can be very impactful similarly if you're using branded in red like this while going second you can use it to not only Dodge impal but also summone dotting and chimer when you're going first if you have a draw branded in red you can sometimes try to set it up so that it can protect your El from input and the way you do this is by getting a target for the Branded in red into the graveyard before you normal them the way you can read your opponent's toggles for inm is to realize that if they are on auto there wouldn't be any response from them until the moment you put a m on the board at which point there will be a responds to everything this is especially important to recognize since if you do summon a cesia to the field first your opponent is pretty likely to hold that inome for a long time so it's best not to get confused about what it could be because of cesia sometimes your opponents will decide to hold their imper until their own turn where they will then use it on either your mirror Jade or your cesia this also happens if your opponent top de infirm as the siut in either case remember that you can still activate marage a even though it's negated this means you can still send Ren brm to the graveyard and you can still revive alas if you don't have access to cesia and your Ali ends up getting imped one of the ways you can extend is to Pivot into a very line CS like lellan High Spirits theit and even branded in white can be used to summon our a second monster without locking yourself into fusions keep in mind that if you start with keeper of dragon magic instead of ala you won't be able to do a ver line since even after being imped Keeper's effect will still lock you into Fusion mosters even though your normal sumon is usually the best time to use imperm against branded some opponents are going to wait until after branded Fusion resolves to use their imper if your opponent impant your albon then it's not actually so bad since you can still tribute it to some of the Bellion from the graveyard and then trigger it in the end phase with Alban's effect to the end phase you can add or set branded and red to your field and say alas are still in the graveyard you can activate the Branded in bread and access mirade you could even then trigger the Branded lost to search from a courier as well effect pet is largely the same as imperum since their effects are very similar the main way to play around it is to summon cesia before summoning your Alaba and everything else that applies to imper also that applies to veila one of the differences between vea and impa is that it can be outed with cold by the grave it also makes the rest life since it is a monster effect this means that you have a lot more cards in your deck that you can hard draw to directly counter the veila it's also cross out and as usual if you do want to out this with cross out you will need to be playing FAA in your own deck one of the other differences with vea is that by putting a light monster into your opponent's graveyard vea unlike imp allows a besal like Magnum Oria to actually work as an extender if your alra gets veiled you can use a Bisal to banish the veiler special summon the Bisal and then link into verting another difference is that B can only be used in the main phase which means if you use branded opening to special summon aliver in the draw phase or the standby phase your opponent isn't going to be able to use ve since searching in the draw phase specifically also play around r on lock bird there's not much reason to ever summon in the standby phase so if you are going to play around B this way you might as well play around roll at the same time by using opening in the draw face that being said your Ela can still be impromed in the drill phase which is why if you have Fusion deployment or any other way to access cesia first then it's probably still worth playing it that way since you're going to be able to play around the veiler and the impa bayet only being able to be used in the main phase is also something you can respect when pushing for lethal going second if you're planning on removing blockers from your opponent's field with cause like Mira Jade or Furious Dragon then it's optimal to wait until the battle phase before using these removal effects that way you're playing around a vea this is especially important when you're pushing it to Max C since your opponent is more likely to have vea if they have more cards in their hand and it's also much more important in that situation that you actually succeed with the o TK the next end trap to talk about is Nibiru in general Nibiru is not usually very effective against branded there are some situations where it can be really good but for the most part nabir is never going to win the game against branded on its own branded has a lot of ways to continue playing in the end phase and from the graveyard on the opponent's turn ad generally is never that sad about having its monsters sent from the field to the graveyard where they can easily just Trigger or be revived one of the specific reasons why niir isn't good against brandit is that it can be punished by gril in this situation here for example most opponents are going to use the neiro right here since they want to deny Lan's effects to bring out brand at last in response to neiro you can chain cesia to summon grino when the chain resolves granino will miss its unsummon trigger but he will still get its second effect to special summon a qu from your deck quem can then send alas or retribution or branded sword all of which have the potential to be stronger than usual since you're now still going to be in the main phase the be also triggers mirade when it tributes it which means the Nibiru buddy itself is always going to be dealt with additionally marij Jade can even chain its effect in response to the Nibiru to banish your own Rebellion allowing you to sneak another alabas fusion into the graveyard for free like Titanic clad for example by combining this with cesia to summon gruel you can set up some really nice lines where you actually rebuild your whole end board during the entries like this for example [Music] for for [Music] by summoning albas and fusing with it you put albas back into the graveyard which means your quem doesn't need to send it this allows you to send something else like additional discard photo like branded sword retribution or a target for Retribution to add back you could even send a second copy of alar so that your branded in red can be used more freely when it comes to your one card combos neiru is actually a little bit better since you still have to summon five times but you don't have access to gruol another way of beating neiru is with mcua although I personally think this method is hugely overrated in the combo section you will have seen that almost all of the combos that could search for mura on the first turn in order to play around neiru actually don't do it and instead search for an extender like shroud of dragon or kit this is how you get your highest value out of your branded combos since mcua can just as easily be searched on the opponent's turn instead using mcua is out to is not something that I ever really planned for since Brandon usually play St airo pretty well that being said there are times where searching mercuria on your own turn to beat niru is actually the best play for example if there's no better targets to search for with branded L then you might as well get the mcua sooner rather than later another example is when you're going second one of the few times when a biru can be devastating for Branded is when you're trying to push for lethal going second so Satan mccu of but this kind of debiru is actually pretty good it also comes up when you hard draw the mura and your opponent just so happens to have the neiru although to be completely honest even if you hard draw mcua if you're not playing multiple copies or branded sword it can actually be better to just let V be disolve sometimes so that you still have access to the mcua As A disruption thrust can punish the be pretty hard you can add grass to your hand if your opponent isn't also playing a 60 card deck and option like Fusion deployment and Brandon n white are pretty good as well reading a toggle for airu is pretty simple if your opponent is on auto they aren't going to have any response until you summon your fifth monster at which point they will have a response to everything even if your opponent doesn't use a right away at the time you were expect them to it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have it sometimes your opponents will try to get creative within a Bure when they recognize that it's not going to be very effective so it is a good idea to not ignore it and to not play into it unnecessarily and then of course like every other hand trap you can also beat it with cross out if you're playing it so next is droll and luck bir in general droll is like a beu it's not really an effective hand trap against branded although it can sometimes be pretty good in certain situations the simplest way to be droll is to use your quickplay searches like opening and High Spirits in the draw phase draw can only be activated outside of the dra office so you're pretty much buying yourself one free search by doing this although if you do have multiple searches to activate in that same draw phase then you'll be saving yourself two free searches as well you will need to be tled on in order to do this so if your toggle is set to Auto then be aware that you might miss the chance also it is worth noting that High Spirits can actually be chained to draw them love bird as well when it comes to High Spirits specifically this can actually be a little bit tricky since it can sometimes be difficult to decide right away what your first place should be High Spirits can be a starter but it can also be an extender so if you do draw High Spirits in your opening hand it's important to make sure that you know whether or not you're going to activate it as your first action before leaving the draw phase if High Spirits is going to be your first action then there's no reason not to use it in the draw phase so that you can beat draw a mud Bird for free if you use High Spirit as your first action but in the main phase instead then it's almost certainly a mistake since you're just inviting yourself to be Dred unnecessarily this hand is an example of a hand that could use High Spirits as its first play or choose to keep it as a potential push through an a gate on the alibo if you do decide to start with High Spirits then the best way to do it would be during the draw phase the only possible exception to this would be if you are baiting your opponents into using draw because you expect them to have have it and you have a triple tactics talents opening is also sometimes better used in the main phase rather than in the draw phase draw isn't always as popular as imper and Maxi which is why it's usually better to play around those cards instead by summoning Gia first and holding the opening so that you can chain it to a potential Maxi the reason to play around droll on lock but instead would be if you have no means of playing around the other cards anyway like in this hand or or if you have a hand that is actually hurt by draw M bird quite a bit like this hand another thing to point out like I mentioned earlier using opening in the drill phase also plays around vea one of the times where droll can kind of hurt you is when using High Spirits to search for shrouded Dragon during the main phase shrouded dragon draws a card meaning that on the droll you can't activate it which not only means you can't get a draw but more importantly means you can't pay the cost of sending a card to the graveyard from the deck either that being said there is usually a way to adapt most of your combos so that you can still make a decent end board under draw one of the times where droll can actually be devastating is in h that of relying on foolish burial or G sophus to start a WKA combo foolish burial is the only starter in this hand for example and it's going to live pretty hard if the opponent has to roll also anytime that you start your turn by using shroud dragon to to draw a card right away is also pretty risky into draw if you have aliber and lellan you can respect draw by summoning the Ala first in general as long as you have branded Fusion draw isn't going to do much as branded doesn't really need to search any cards once it's got access to its branded Fusion you are still able to use albon's effect to set while under troll just keep in mind that you have to set the card you don't have the option of adding it to your hand so those combos that use High Spirits during the end phase won't be possible the toble pton for draw if your opponent is on auto would be a response window after you draw or search usually draw is going to be dropped immediately anyway so there isn't much benefit to interpreting their tuggles however some opponents would still like to play around gamma while you have no monsters on the board so if you do see a response after searching but your opponent doesn't use anything it could potentially still be draw and then the last thing to mention is that as usual draw could be outed by Cold by and cross out and it also makes the rust live and you can also still use thrust to set duplication to your field like normal even though you can't search that being said when it comes to cold by specifically I recommend that you think twice before using cold by on draw since you usually will have a way to keep playing anyway so it could be sometimes the better play to keep the cross out or cold by for a more important handra like ash blossom the next T trap to talk about is dimension shifter shifter is strong against branded because it denies you all of your graveyard effects this means that some of your consistency is gone since you can no longer access branded Fusion through retribution it also means that a lot of your power is gone since you're not able to trigger things like albon or Titanic clad in the end phase and you're also not going to be able to get albas into the graveyard to use as disruption on the opponent's turn your also cut off from a lot of followup since all of your spells and traps including branded Fusion itself are going to get managed after you use them something else that's really important about shifter is that it disables mirade mirade needs to be able to send a card to the graveyard as cast which means it can't be used under Dimension shifter since shifter lasts for two turns it means that it's pointless to summon a mirade on your turn one since it won't provide any value or deception on the opponent's turn there are some things you can still do under shifter though like activate branet fusion and resolve lellan dellion can Shuffle from banish through its Fusion summon effect which means you can still easily summon whatever you want with it luua and tragedy both trigger when vanished which means you could still effectively send them from the deck to the graveyard with branded Fusion which will then get them to trigger the typical game plan under shifter is to use your normal summon to access branded Fusion like normal and then activate branded Fusion to summon Rebellion while using mercuria from your deck this allows you to tricker mcua for a search and summon either Draco stellia or renb with the lellan the mcua can then search for Kit shrouded Dragon can't be used in the shifter so kit is usually the best Target if he summoned renr then you are also able to special summon the kit from your hand and use it to search for Branded king or retribution both of which are destructions that can be used under shifter however keep in mind that if you summon draer to pelia instead then you won't be able to special some on the kit and you won't have an alas Fusion on your field having kit in your hand for next turn is still pretty good and often you will do this anyway since you can use it to add back the Branded Fusion from vanished in fact this is sometimes the better way of using kit even if you can special summon the kit one other option is to summon a furious dragon with the belly Furious dragon is also a pretty good description that can be used under shifter however it does require to adopt dragons as material which means you will need to either discard one as cost follow Bellion effect or send two copies of albad with branded Fusion as the material full of valiant in which case you are giving up on the mcua sech and then another good card to summon once it's released in masteral under Dimension shifter is light and D's dragon lord here's a combo that allows you to do that shifter does make thrust live and you can use it to set card like imprim dimensional barrier or branded King since branded Fusion is going to be banished there's no point in setting Fusion duplication however it is worth noting that Fusion deployment is also a valid Target for duplication this means that if your opponent allows your deployment to go to the graveyard then you will still have the option of using duplication effectively this is actually a pretty common oversight in my experience most opponents will not use shifter in response to deployment even though I think they should something else you can do to slightly play better into shifter is to chain cards like High Spirits and opening to shifter just to get some Cards into the graveyard if you're able to then send an alaz or a desp monster to the graveyard for example then you give yourself the option of still using branding red on the opponent's T the toggle pattern for shifter if your opponent is an alto will be that they have a response to everything this is also the same as Maxi however you can sometimes infer that it a shifter instead because your opponent didn't respond to an effect the special symbols like deployment or CES effect in the hand remember that shifter is a dark monster which means it is a viable Target for aysal and also keep in mind that by using shifter your opponent has given you information about what deck they're potentially playing so you can try to use that information to your advantage when deciding what exactly you want to summon with rebellion and what card to set with thrust next up is Ghost arer this card is kind of famously bad against branded as there's almost no good times to use it none of your mon do need to stay on the field for their effects to work at least not on turn one and if your opponent ever tries to use ogre on a Fusion Monster you can use opening to protect you from being destroyed one of the best times to use ogre against brendid is in response to cesia grol requires cesia as material so if you use cia's effect and your opponent chains ghoster then you won't be able to summon gronell unless you have another cesia in your hand and you might then even be forced to summon something else if you suspect your opponent has ogre you could try to plan for this by making sure you have at least a good backup Target to sign what the effect at the very least it is worth sparing a thought to what would happen given your exact hand another good time to use ogre against branded is in response to Al's effect this isn't something that's going to happen on your turn one but it might come up on an opponent's turn or when you're going second the way you could try to play around this is to try and chain block elbow so that your opponent can't use ogre on it and like always you can out it with cold by and cross out and thrust usually you can just ignore ghosta it's not that common and it's not really that big of a deal most of the time even if it catches You by surprise the only thing to be aware of is them using it on your cesia which could potentially force you into a bad situation so the next thing to talk about is Bisal Bisal are good against branded since they can effectively negate any of your graveyard ride effects like Quan banishment and renr they can also negate branded in red and CES effect at the end phase Bal can also banish cause like albon Titanic clad and Gran quinel and also lellan from your graveyard additionally beses can also be strong when used to banish albas from the graveyard in response to the effect of something like albon on the field or branded in white when this happens similarly to how ghost Oger interacts with cesia you could be forced into summoning something that you don't want to when it comes to banishing Alba's fusions from the grard it's important for your opponent that they do it at the end of the main phase if they let you go to the end phase then you're going to have priority to activate one of your elbow's fusions first if you've suspected that they have aysal you can punish this mistake by using your most important effect first which will be likely albon or satanic one way to play around bis deals is with branded lost on the summon of albon your opponent isn't able to activate a bis deal or anything at all for that matter so you're freely able to resolve it to some of the Bellion using lost play around bals on your opponent's turn is also a viable strategy if you want to use renm to revive albath you can try to do it during the Branded lost window so that your opponent can't respond another way of playing around bestial is with mcua if you happen to draw mcua in your opening hand then you could punish a pisal in response to your albon by negating it and then banishing the mcua for the effective albon something else you can do to buy around Bisal is choose to set Cuts Like braded king or retribution with Al on in the end phase since they don't lose to Bisal on the opponent's turn the way the bishman and Brandon red do this is something you might consider against decks to play a lot of PS like Centon or you might want to do it if your repot used Magnum earlier in your 10 often can search for another B deal in the end phase which means your opponent might just have an answer to branded in red or banishment retribution specifically could even negate aysal so you can sometimes use it on its own to protect your RN BM or your quen remember that Bisal trigger granino so similar to how you could play around the biru you could also chain cesia in response to a Bisal that way you can trigger the effects of grol to summon out quen from the deck unlike new her though gr grel will also be able to trigger its on summon effect as well another way of playing round Bisal is to summon L Bellion with graned Fusion instead of ALU it doesn't matter if your opponent has a Bisal you're still going to get to marade since lellan can use banished moners as material the taco passin for Abyssal is going to be in response to everything as long as there's a Target in the graveyard and a monster on your board the way you might attack to best steal from your opponent is if there's no response until you put a Target into the graveyard and a monster on the board and then the last thing as usual is thrust and cross out you kind cold by aysal and using cross out is always suspicious since your opponent gets to keep the bis steel and using it again on their own turn is pretty good against branded still and in first is actually extra good since you could search a card not just sit anyway that's it for the best deals let's move on to DD Crow Crow is similar to Bisal in that most of its good uses are exactly the same therefore pretty much all of what I said about bals also applies to deat Crow there are however a couple of differences for example Crow is able to banish a SP trap not just a monster this means that it can also prevent you from accessing branded Fusion through retribution the way you try to play around this is by accessing braded Fusion from the deck rather than the gray good another strong use for Crow is in response to duplication to banish your branded Fusion duplication needs to banish the Branded Fusion itself in order to copy the effect so DD Crow will effectively negate it this is hard to predict to be honest but if you were going to try and play around it you could do so by only activating the duplication during a branded lust window reading your opponent's toggles for DD Crow is pretty simple there's going to be no response while you have no carding at R here and as soon as you get a card into the graveyard there's going to be a response to everything and then of course as usual you can add it with cold by the grave cross out and sometimes gamma and you can punish it with thrust in the cases where you get your branded Fusion vanished by did Crow then thrust for duplication loses a lot of its value so you might want to consider setting something else like imper or branded king ghost spell is interesting against branded wi cot is usually considered bad against Brenton but it does have a few important uses that can catch you off guard is c can negate albon and lellan as well as kit and some of your endb pieces like branded in red banishment and RRS affecting the graveyard if you have branded lost on the field then ghost Bell won't be able to negate banishment or branded in red since ghost B actually negates activations playing around ghost Bell is not something you normally do since the card is not that popular overall in most formats however if you see that your opponent is playing ghost Bell or you're in a situation where it cost you nothing to play around it then you can beat it by Chain blocking important effects like alvon and Rebellion for example if you have a quam on the field when summon the Bellion you can use the belly in is chain Ling one and quem is chaining two this is something I like to do whenever my quem has been infermed or veiled on its first effect after I normal summoned it since it's a way of playing around ghost spell for free as the qu can still be activated to chain Vu the Lilian despite being negated next is gamma gamma is pretty hit Miss against branded it can be devastating at times but also pretty useless at other times the best time to use gamma against branded is on your normal sumon whether that's aliber or keeper or kit or even quen your normal sumon is almost always peval in accessing branded fusion and denying that is the best thing that gamma can hope to achieve once branded Fusion results gamma becomes a lot weaker because of how your plays Branch out into multiple effects if G is used on something like albon for example then you're still going to be able to trigger it in the end phase and keep elas in the graveyard as a target for Branded in red if you had opening in your graveyard then you can even protect the albon from being destroyed allowing it to still be tributed for the Bellion another important thing to realize is that branded lost protect your cesia from being negated if your opponent chains gamma to cesia while you have branded lost it is still going to special summon itself as well as the driver from the deck but it is not going to negate Cuts easier also similarly to niru and Bisal gamma triggers granua so if you can summon grino in response to GMA you're going to be able to trigger its effect to some quen since this would be happening before you activated branded Fusion most of the time it actually gives you some interesting extra lines that you can do to punish your opponent BST is a really good C at the gamma since most of the time your opponent is going to be using gamma on your Ali then since gamma puts a moster on your opponent's field you can actually just use thrust to search for Branded Fusion anyway detecting gammer is pretty simple if your opponent is on alto then they're going to have a response to every moner effect you activate and nothing else you can maybe detect this by seeing a response to Cur like mcua shroud of dragon tragedy and L Bellion and finally cross out is technically able to negate gamma if if you're playing it you just need to watch out for that same gamma being used again on the opponent's T so those are all the main hand traps you're going to need to worry about but there are also some other hand traps that aren't really scared in masto and these are likely known to be pretty popular so I think it's important to talk about them as well no charmi fuas is very similar to mik C and for the most part you're going to play around it in the same way fo us allows your opponent to draw a card every time you special summon from the main deck or the extra deck this mainly matchs for your extra deck summons but it does also draw from Fusion deployment branded opening and Titanic Cloud at the end phase it also draws from granal effect special summon which is important to remember when you're play against multiple hand traps main way to beat for w house is the same as Mexi it is to draw an out to it called by cross out Ash and Gamma will all beat it and thrust just like Maxi can help you still make a good for under the FAS if your opponent chains FAS to your binded Fusion you will typically just summon sanctify and pass just like you would with maxi one difference though is that if you have the means to search for gesia and then special summon it from your hand it won't give your opponent an extra draw like it does with Max C so you should try to do this if you can if you're on full woman the texting fers from your opponent's toggles would be pretty simple as long as they control Mo cards they will have a response to everything it's also worth keeping in mind that if your opponent has two copies of fers they can use them both although they would most likely use them both at the same time next is mchi perua this allows your opponent to draw a guard every time you normal summon or special summon most from hand this card in general is not that powerful against brandid it's always going to draw one card to replace itself since you're pretty much always going to be using your normal summon however there's a huge amount of hands that don't e the special from the hand at all so it's unlikely for peria to be drawing multiple Cards Against branded and evening the few hands that do special summon from the hand generally only need to do it once or twice it's pretty reasonable to give your opponent one extra drill if it means you can perform a full combo one extra card in your opponent's hand is not usually going to make the difference as to whether or not they can break your full combo detecting perua from your opponent's tuggles is not already something that's going to come up since most opponents will use it when away in the draw phas since they want to make sure that they get that draw feet normal which could easily be your first action in the main pH if your opponent has a response to everything but they didn't use peria in the draw phase then the hand trap is probably not Peril in general if you haven't out to peria like cold by or Ash I don't think it's a good idea to B using it since your opponent is probably only going to get one or two drills anyway and it's better to sa that for a more what an hand tra like ash next is Dominus Purge this card can negate any card or effect that tries to search a cat the best Target for this would be aliber and also heps this card is tricky because it can't be beaten by Cold by and it doesn't make thst like as it is a trap cut it also can't really be beaten by crosell since you're never going to be playing this card in your deck one thing about perge to remember is that you get a lot of information about your pl's deck because of the attributes that it locks you into some popular meta Decks that might be playing it all voiceless voice melodious and sometimes ritual Beast it's also worth noting that your opponent can't use fire monsters after using Purge so if your opponent uses Purge you now know for a fact that you are also going to get ashed the taco pattern for Dominus Purge is going to look similar to Ash except there's not going to be a response to Cur that don't surge like deployment and branded Fusion if you suspect your opponent has Ash but they of not having a response to your branded pan then there's a good chance that that is dominous Purge although like I said a minute ago Purge would likely have been used earlier on on cards like aliar keeper High Spirits or even tragedy and then the last Hench up to talk about is actually one of the scariest Hench UPS of branded out of all of them and that is Dominus impulse dominous impulse can negate branded Fusion just like ash it also works on the Branded lost and it can't actually be Heat by Cold by the grave or gamma cross out is also not likely to be able to negate it unless you're wanting to play a useless copy of impulse in your deck and since it's a trap card it also doesn't make thrust life it's for these reasons that impulse is honestly even better than Ash against branded most of the time playing around impulse is going to be very similar to playing around Ash you want to focus on birthday lines and playing with High Spirits impulse can't negate High Spirits or Verte so if your opponent is holding it for Branded Fusion then by the time you get to Verte it's going to be too late for them to use it impulse can only be played in a limited number of decks due to the attributes that it locks you into so if your opponent uses impulse it does give away some information about what deck they're playing just like with dominous Purge overall though impulse is pretty difficult to play around if there are popular Decks that play this card then branded is definitely going to be at an inherent disadvantage so that's all for the hand reps but there's also a few board Breakers that I think are worth mentioning as well because the way you play around them is often as part of your turn one combo so it's not too dissimilar to playing around hand trips the first board breaker I want to talk about is evenly matched evenly is a card that I don't really consider to be a problem for Branded as you do have a few good ways of dealing with it first and best way to deal with evenly matched is to use sanctifier to put a monster on your opponent's field during the battle fease evenly requires your opponent to control no cards so since they now control a monster they aren't able to use it it's usually important to put the monster in defense position so that they can't crash it and then activate evenly anyway although you can technically achieve the same thing by just having all of your own monsters in defense position if the monster you're summoning to the opponent's field is a Floodgate like breum or offers then that's even better and playing around evenly match would just be a bonus here if you have sanctifier on your end board then using it is pretty straight followed once your opponent enters the battle phase you can activate sanctify it's worth letting them commit their battle phase first since it makes them wasted and you now know that you are guaranteed to survive the turn if you don't have sanctifier on your end board then it's still usually possible to play around evenly matched by summoning sanctifier with branded and red into the Bellion or branded in red directly you can also summon it easily with Fusion duplication in either case you're again going to want to wait until the battle phase to do this so you're forcing the opponent to commit to it sometimes you will have to make sanctify in your main phase because the only way you can summon it is with c's effect this is a little riskier since your opponent can choose to stay in the main phase but it's still worth doing as the downside of getting evenly matched is pretty bad and and also you should still save the actual sanctifier effect for the battle fit sometimes you will have to jump through hoops to do this but in my opinion it's always worth doing since most opponents are not going to pretend to have evenly they probably really do have it and even if they are just pretending you still ski their battle phase another good way of beating evenly meshed is with light and dun's dragon lord most of the combos in the spreadsheet are designed with this card in mind which is why they prioritize setting banishment so that you can easily summon this card with it if your opponent goes into the battle phase all you have to do is flit banishment targeting albon and then summon light and darkness Dragon the light and darkness Dragon will negate evenly and it will still have two negates left over for your opponent's main face too a third way of beating evenly mashed is with branded King branded King can negate anything the only problem is that it also negates most of your own board as well since eagly meshed is going to be most likely the first card your opponent uses negating it with Brad of King is going to be very costly as you won't have had the chance to use the rest of your board yet for this reason BR of king is not an ideal way of beating evenly matched that being said it does still allow you to keep all of your cards and the opponent has lost their battle phase so if your opponent is playing a deck that can't easily clear your board in main Phase 2 then you're still going to be in a pretty good position and then the last way of beating evenly is to just let it happen I for ing your opponent to use their battle phase of actually playing into one of branded strengths which is your followup on 10 three you can keep miror Jade and still have description available if alaz is in your graveyard then you even have access to multiple descriptions including renb technically if you're playing evenly messed yourself which is very common and branded you can even negate it with cross out this is actually a pretty good out since there wouldn't be much good uses for that cross out on your end board otherwise next is lightning stor this card is popular in tempai and also some other going second decks like Sky strike it also if you're playing in a best of Three Tournament lightning storm is a potential side Deck card that the opponent could have the way to beat lightning storm is pretty simple you just have to put your monsters in defense position there's also branded opening which could protect some of your important monsters however it won't protect cesia and quen so you going to want to always have those cards in defense position in General lightning storm is usually more effective against branded when it's used to destroy your backrow one of the ways you can play around this is by using banishment to someone light and darkness dragon in the standby phase so that it will negate the lightning storm and then there's also branded King using branded King is very risky since unlike with evenly your opponent is still going to be able to be in their main phase which means there's not as much compensation for negating your own board Tempi for example could very easily kill you afterwards and then the last way of beating lightning storm is with sanctifier lightning storm can be used if your opponent controls a card which means you can very easily disable it by putting a monster on that board during the standby phase now this is something you probably never going to do just to beat lightning storm however if you're summoning a Floodgate like recream then you can easily beat lightning storm for free just by doing it in the standby face next is forbidden droplets droplets is pretty good against branded especially when it's tempai that's using it however it's not a death sentence by itself since even if they negate every monster you have you're most likely still going to have a disruption through your back row branded lost and albas in the graveyard one way of playing around droplets when you're trying to foot gate your opponent is to only use sanctifier during a branded mous window if at any point your opponent tries to use droplets before you've used sanctifier you can always chain sanctifier to the droplets or if you can't you can chain a spellow trap like branches and bread or banishment and then chain sanctifier to that and then the last board breaker I want to talk about is triple tactics talents talents is pretty simple to play around however it's also easy to overlook the way to respect talents as best you can is to make sure that any monsters you summon on the opponent's turn are summoned in defense position that way if your opponent steals them with talents they aren't going to be able to attack within that time it's a small thing but it's easy to do and it doesn't really cost you much of anything also if you summon all of your monsters on turn one in defense position as well and then all of the monsters you summon on the opponent's dead are also summon in defense position you're making it so that your opponent can never steal a monster with talents and then crash it into a monster with equal attack firing two monsters for the price of one but anyway that's it for the individual cars I wanted to talk about in practice your opponent is sometimes going to have multiple hand traps as well as multiple board Breakers or a combination of board Breakers and hand trps especially when it comes to tempai so playing around everything at the same time can actually get pretty difficult anyway let's now move on to the next section where I'm going to go over how to play out opening hands that have a lot of engine in them and therefore a lot of different options for how to play as you'll see it's mostly the ideas we talk about about the combos in the combo section as well as the ideas in this section about playing around hand trips so now we're going to go over what you can do when your opening hand contains a lot of different stars and extenders more than just the basic requirements for a standard combo from the spreadsheet this hand for example contains multiple ways to play so piloting this hand optimally is going to be more complicated than simply following the line from the spreadsheet hands like this are actually going to be pretty common since branded usually plays a lot of engine cards no matter how you build the deck so it's important to know how to approach them in general I like to break down hands like this into three separate Steps step one is to identify all of the one or two card combos that you have available and to think about which one of those combos makes the strongest end board then step two is to consider how you could combine different combos together to create an improvised combo that has an even stronger endboard and then step three is to consider how you can use some of the starters or extenders in your hand to help your other starters or extenders play better into hand DS combining these three steps together and then applying your best judgment is going to help you make the most of this kind of hand so using this hand as an example we have to start by identifying the different basic combos that we have available you can see that for the first step we have ala and niia both of which are their own one cut Combos and then there's also a whole bunch of two cut combos as well like ala plus deployment highp Bia deployment plusia and also nidea combos with all of these cards as well a lot of these two card combos have fairly similar end boards and strength but probably the strongest one in isolation is Alaba plus Nadia which can end on mirade plus banishment plus branded lost plus alas in the graveyard plus Quan plus cesia and it also draws one card and this combo also requires one disc code on its own if we were to just do that combo and discard one of these other cards the endb we'd have is pretty good but clearly it's going to be possible to end on more given that we have so many other extenders if we then move on to the second step and try to combine these cards to get better value one of the first things that comes to mind is that Saria plus High Spirits can play without a normal Su in fact the optimal combo from the spreadsheet for Saria plus High Spirits doesn't even use its normal summon this means that we could easily improve on that combo with this normal summon Al also the Saria plus heper is combo uses Saria and Tred to access branded Fusion through retribution which means we could use Alaba to search for something else another thing is that Thea plus Alaba combo doesn't access cesia Until the End phase and it doesn't summon gruol on the first turn at all we could improve on this since we have deployment which means we can access cartesia a lot earlier having cia's effect for free and therefore grrrols effect for free is usually an indicator that you can set up a flip gate look so that's now something that this hand has access to too something else I'm noticing is that since this hand can draw a card with shrouded Dragon we don't actually need to give up one of these cards in our hand as a discard full of Bellion we can instead just discard the card that we draw overall an improved way of playing this hand might look something like this so this endboard now pretty much has everything you could ever won from a branded end board there is Mary Jade quen cesia albas in the graveyard reum lock with sanctifier already made as Grand going on in the graveyard branded lost the search from a Coura and the ALB on set is branded in red you could also play it slightly differently setting up management instead of branded and bread and you can always go for sanctifier on the opponent's turn with branded and bread in order to play better in the droplets rather than having it on your end board now either way the board is more than strong enough to win the game against end matchup and then for the third step we want to think about how we can instead sequence these cards so that we can play around hand traps as best as possible the first thing to notice is that since we have deployment we have pretty good coverage over in perm and vea we can also play better into draw by using Hep in the draw phase and Nadia 7 in general is pretty good at extending after any hand trap at any point during a combo since we are playing Maximus so no matter what happens a deer is going to make sure that we have a strong play afterwards playing around Ash is something we could do with this hand since we have High Spirits as well as a normal summon it's pretty easy to go for a bir line and it would be a strong bir line too since our normal summon is actually Aliva rather than something like a hand Tri that being said I don't actually think that this hand needs to play around Ash since even if your branded Fusion gets ashed here the endb is still going to be very strong this end board has miror Jade quen Alba's in the graveyard branded in red discards in the hand and cesia with granel still avable it's still pretty good to say that branded Fusion was Ash another thing about this hand specifically is that since there's multiple ways of accessing branded Fusion ala's effect becomes less important to result because of this I actually think it would be better to deliberately play into imper and baa by normal summoning Alaba before using deployment with the intention of trying to bait the opponent into using it if they have it if cesia is on the board then our opponent is probably not going to use the veiler or infirm on Ali which is well we actually want to summon the AL first this encourages our opponent to use the hand traps in a predictable way which is in general exactly what you want them to do when you have a handful of extenders like this also saving deployment until later on is a way of playing bets into max c as well if Alaba gets impromed we can very easily go to plan B which is to access branded Fusion anyway through the sarinia plus High Spurs combo for this to work best it would require not using the high spurs in draw phase and instead keeping it unknown until we've tried to resolve the Ali if we didn't do this then our opponent might catch on to the fact that we're still going to have access to branded Fusion if they infirm aliber and so they might actually choose not to even though there's no cesia on the board so overall with all of these things considered I think the best way of playing this hand would be something like this next up we have this hand and I go through this one a little bit quicker so firstly we can see that we have a few one or two card combos but just like the previous hand clearly we have more going on than just a spreadsheet combo according to the spreadsheet keeper plus opening Plus three random discards can create an endboard of mirade banishment lost Mia quen Alis in the graveyard and grol in the graveyard as well the board is very strong and it is more than enough to win a game against most matchups that being said sequencing up plays so that we play better into hand traps is more important than having the strongest board and if we do have to end on a slightly different board even a slightly worse board in order to do that then it is still going to be worth it when it comes to playing around hand traps with this hand the first thing to notice is that we have a copy as cold by the grace which means we have a direct out to something like ash Blossom and Maxi even though it's possible for our opponents to have two hand traps that we want to negate with cold by generally it's okay to completely play into Ash and Maxi since the chances of them having both is pretty low the next thing to notice is that we have High Spirits and alas which means we can access caresia before G for nor mus this G is the same effect as Fusion deployment which is to play around in ba there's also a branded opening in this hand which is technically an extender that we can use after keeper is normal however something else that is pretty noticeable in this hand is the amount of discards that it needs keeper opening and High Spirits are all wanting to discard cards from our hand not to mention there's also the belly in later which we are going to want to use and if we do have to use the cold by the grave on a hun trap then we won't actually have that available as a discard either what this means for this hand as well as similar hands in general is that the best way to play is going to be to accept that some of our extenders are just going to be used as discounts in this case the Branded opening and keeper are achieving the same thing which is to search for brand of fusion and they're also both requiring a discard which is why it's best to just discard one for the other as we can't really afford to use both of them and then the last thing to point out is that since High Spirits is going to be Ella first action there's no reason not to use it in the draw phase so that we can play better into draw so combining these ideas together I think the optimal way to play this hand would look something like this this inbo is pretty much exactly the same as the spreadsheet combo for opening plus keeper plus three discards except we also have a b of furious dragon in addition and instead of having mcua in the hand right away we do have to get it with branded lost on the opponent's turn after Fusion summon overall though the end board is stronger and it played pretty well into hand trips you'll also notice that we didn't discard the cold by the grave which means that if our opponent did have a hand trap and we had to use the cold by the grave it wouldn't have made a difference to what was possible to make and then the last example of this we have is this hand the first thing to notice about this hand is that it has a hard drawn branded Fusion in general whenever branded Fusion is drawn directly it means that the hand is probably pretty good and in this case specifically you can see that we also have quam plus lellan which is one of the strongest two cut combos in branded on its own on its own lellan plus quem can end on marij plus Furious plus banishment plus lost plus quam plus cesia plus albis in the graveyard and a draw one which is a game-winning end board in any match up however our specific hand here could actually even improve on this end board just a little bit again though like before playing around hand trap is the most important part of these powerful hands so it's important that we secret cell Cuts correctly to start with we have branded fusion in our hand which means it's actually not possible to go for a ver however it does mean that we play pretty well into imper Mala on our normal summon since we would be able to extend afterwards with what is essentially a full combo anyway this combo even beats nabiru as you'll see since it's able to get to mcua before its fifth summon anyway overall I think the timal way to play this hand would probably look something like this the endb has mirade Furious Dragon RB qu cesia branded lost branded in red mcua in hand and Elbas in hand as well as discards for Elbas later on there's no elbow in the graveyard but it is easy to get it into the graveyard using cesia and granel is also still available which means you can send requin and then use the Branded in red to summon sanctify meaning you have access to a recum lock as well so now let's move on some actual examples in master do I'm going to do some example hands and I'm going to do it live with whatever opening hand the deck shuffler gives me this way it's hopefully going to be a more genuine demonstration of how you might actually approach an opening hand in practice okay so now what we're going to do is some example hands um so I'm going to go over to solo mode I'm going to click on one of the solomos that has an extra deck and we're going to place some test TS so we're going to go for Branded this is the deck and they be doing test TS from this list it's not exactly the standard deck list that I showed before but it's pretty close this one has recum in it we're playing lenus um Buck of eclipse is in here it's just a a more full met specific deck list um but it should be the same so we're going to go ahead pick first um it's important that you pick one that has an extra deck so that you can and resolve Maximus but it's it's not that important um so here we have an interesting hand right away this doesn't have any direct ways to stop playing but what we do have is branded in white so we're immediately out of the spreadsheet here um we can actually branded in white if we fuse albas and tragedy that will trigger tragedy and and we can search for alibo which is going to be our normal summon which could be branded Fusion so going lellan into marij Jade the only question is do we discard branded in red or mcua I'm thinking mcua is a good answer because we do play branded sword um if we check the decks you see that we do play branded sword so what we could do is banish the mcua later on for albon and then search for shrouded Dragon to get it back by sending branded sword right right brand in red helps fire around and traps a little bit right it can protect a lellan from impal for example that would be pretty good um it's also a better an end board piece if we set set this right because we're going to get back in the Korea anyway but even if somehow we didn't this is a stronger card than this I think I think the play is straightforward here I think we're going to activate Brad M and we're going to go for lellan there is also this option of renr but this doesn't seem that good because sending renr sending mcua for renr isn't going to banish it so we're not going to trigger a such it has to be lellan using the tragedy and I'm going to put it in the extra moster Zone just because this is going to be my mar dat so it is cutting your career and activating tragedy the chain links here are just to protect against something like gamma which would have been stronger on lellan it also protects against like ghost Bell although I think they would have used ghost Bell on brands in white so here if they had inan or vea we could chain burn it in red tug it the albas and we could make mirror Jade anyway and then with the actual lellan effect we could make potentially mcua I think is also correct IUS which we could make um but um using mcua to make rrum I think is the stronger plate right he's away the mcua to make Ren BM then we have marij Ren brand we search for alar or aler and then we still get to go for Branded Fusion that seems pretty strong to me but our opponent doesn't have any hand traps because it's a solo mode we're going to search for Al not quem because we don't have branded Fusion yet so just want to search for that um mirade I'm going to put this in attack position in the current format I think I'd go for defense position just because of tempai but in general it's going to be an attack position now we get to go for ban and now the question is what do we summon with branded Fusion because we already have have Mir Jade so we don't need to use this to get to miror Jade I think the option looks like it could be cesia so if we send cesia as our light monster for albian we're going to be able to banish the mcua as well as the cesia for grono we could then maybe do a line where we use Gran vanol and mcua probably mcua to search for shrouded to get branded sword although there's no elbaz in the graveyard there will be an elbaz in the grave yet yeah and know we can spash a some in the CIA for my hand by adding it back we can go for that kind of Lane alternatively we C go albon sending lellan into renr get a search like this get a such at this for shrouded jod add back mcya and we end on RBM Mir Jade branded lost MCU in aate branded and bread with a Target we can also activate the miror Jade at that point to send Titanic lad negate with renr and then summon Quam in the in Phase that's a good option um I kind of like that option more I think um so our options are between Mary Jade plus renr plus Quin plus Alba in the grave plus branded in red plus MCA which is pretty strong all we can go for the CIA line where we get we would have to use guier to fuse away the albon all we would have to send lalian with Grano to send her away I don't think it's as strong I think we should go for the ren from line so I'm going to go Al on here we're going to send the usual albas and [Music] Bellion and we're going to summon Reno so looking at the other options here Furious is not good because we would have to use Alon itself we don't have another dark dragon in the graveyard um if possible it would have been nice to end on that but I don't think it's going to be possible I think we just go like this we make R [Music] from and that's going to set for sure added there is an option of searching kits because you do have a card in hand but I don't think we want to put back this card it's pretty good on our end board so I'm just going to search for sh [Music] Dragon then to bring out branded lost um and now we're going to draw a card we get branded Lost first so that we don't draw it we only play one so we might as well get it for free and here we want to send branded sword so that we can get back my career now your High Spirits which is interesting it is very interesting because we could potentially use that we could go high per in the end phase to discard the cesia that we add back it would just mean that we actually send cesia and not Elbas we don't currently have an albas so it would be nice to send Elbas um is that better we would get cesia to the field I think it might be better it might be better so one option to consider here is how many Quin we're playing and in this build it's just one so one makes this play a little bit less attractive because it means that we don't have the option of summoning one qu this time and then Grano summon the second quen to send elas so we would have to access alas through Brandon right we would have to use cesia or branded in red to fuse then search for alz then send alz from a hand with the cesia on the field to get it into the graveyard and even then it's really only accessible through the quen because renir is on our field and yeah it would have to be the brandom in red that we use as well it can't be cuto um I'm not sure I'm not sure I think either option is good here I think if we Tuggle on and go to the end phase we can activate the marade with an a send Titanic CL put a negate so in if we did this in the main phase we could have returned blue belly into the hand and then discarded it to such from magma that's probably the better play in this exact deck but just to match the spreadsheet and what what I was setting up earlier we're playing as if light and darkness Dragon exists so this is going to want to set vanishment we're going to want a leion on the board um and I'm not going to return my it to hand because I want to use it as material for Chimera so now we're going to use Titanic lad and then a su of qu and I think the best way to play this is probably to send alaz is a little bit more reliable into board Breakers if we send cesia and then use High Spirit we are going to get to search for an albas so we don't actually need to resolve the Branded lust I was wrong about that we get to search for one with the High Spirits we already have mcua there's nothing else to set um but it's still unreliable right because if we get and say we get dark rollet or droplets we can not access an alas Fusion anymore all right branded and red is limited I guess it's not because we can still Target the tragedy but then use the alow from the hand you know what I think I'm convinced I think I like this line better I think I like this line so here we get access to gr gal we get access to alaz in the hand and then CL the sky trigger we get to revive goo and now we get Alon which sets B okay so here on this end board we have we have marade which is live Ren bone which is in aate mcua which is in neate we have cesia which can make a second albon or it could make potentially lellan but probably albon i' i' we want to go albon here in into like a a furious Dragon right and then we have rended in red which can Target the tragedy at any time to make God in Chimera we have Quan which can revive Mir Jade um if we're playing dragos stellia here it would be pretty pretty good because we could send away the miror Jade to summon quen or to summon it back with quen um but we don't really to have that option that being said this board is is crazy I think this is easily enough to win except for against like the craziest of tempai hands for example so this is a good board and we started with a pretty bad bad hand All Things Considered okay so this hand I to on right by way this is something you're going to have to do you want to make sure that if you're going to use high birdge you're going to play her on drone so I'm looking at this hand and I'm seeing we have a target for heist Birds this is also a Target however we don't have it another nor sumon and I'm pretty sure this you know you don't want to use lellan if you can you'd rather use lellan um for its own effect search sne and then send that for heis bir so I don't think we're playing around roll in this particular hand the only the only tricky thing is that it actually hurts right if we go main phase activate levion or activate keeper it's actually going to hurt quite a bit if we get drill um the safest way to play it is to go for keeper first and search brand ation because we still do quite a lot on drw if we have branded Fusion we can also then chain High Spirits I think it's the strongest play is to not play around drol in the draw phase and we're going to go we're going to start with hether and the only other consideration is instead of playing our R Ro what we could do is discard a rebellion for sireno and then search I use the high spirit that way we can get to shrouded dra a card and then discard that card from keeper instead because the D7 and Max Z are kind of good we don't necessarily want to discard these so there's that option um but there is also the option of just going for the keeper plus lellan comb right the bestial combo where we don't actually High Spirits our our Serenia we just summon it so this is tricky and there's quite a lot of options here I think given that the hand is so strong it's reasonable to just summon this now and discard Maxi it honestly is reasonable um yeah think we try and go for the heist the bestial combo we're going to discard maxi and if we got hand chats here we would have access to branded Fusion this way we would also have n servant afterwards um but let's say we didn't get hit with a hand trap because our opponent has no hand TRS so we're going to go for the Bal line here and what I'm doing here is still resolving I'm summoning the the run from first the active in Rebellion because it's still not completely guaranteed that I'm going to want to search for Seria could still be searching for Rebellion uh searching for magnut I mean so let's say we got Ash and branded Fusion it might be better to get magnut although in this case because we have High Spirits it's probably still s you but here what we're going to do is summon the S which looks a little weird because we have high spirits but I think I think we're going to go for this line [Music] so this is going to add cesia then we summon the Rebellion we do this first to play better into niru we're going to send here I think we're going to send branded sword because in the regular line we could send ran as cough L to branded and white what I kind of like it better to just search for Brandon and white with kit I think I think I prefer that so I'm going to send branded sword so that I can play around uh nairu completely and also just have the mcua in in my hand so this is going to be the fifth summon so in response to cesy I'm going to chain the Branded sword that way I have a negate okay so now one option because we have keeper specifically we could revive the alz to our field we needed to leave it in the graveyard for now because we wanted to summon cesia but now I could bring it to the field and then use it as material full cesia that is an option um I'm not sure how much I I like that option though um yeah no I like this option I think it's good because it's basically the same thing except when we use branded and white I'm going to get to leave alas in the grave yet instead of banishing it from the grave yet I because we're now using it from the field so we're going to go for Grand Gro here I'm going to use the keeper because we want to use Rebellion as material for light DA's Dragon so the chaining here don't matter our opponent correspond anyway just make sure you know which you're sending with which so usually we would send Titanic ladia however because we have Nadia I'm thinking it might be better to just send a requium Lu right so that we can do this I then we could still send n later with I still send Titanic clad with n and I know with branded lost we want to search for kit here and the card we're going to put back is going to be the High Spirits we don't really have a use for it so we're going add brand them white [Music] this is mirade when he is the grand G from the field and the alaz now we need to wait until the end phase to activate the marade in this line because we need to trick it the quen which we don't have yet so there's no option of using it now and then returning lellan um we've also already use Rebellion so we would always leave it on the field um we could pass kit but we can do that again in the end phase anyway so from here I think we're going to go n and and we're going to go the Maximus line because we play it so I'm going to search for night the only the only issue here cuz if we droll exactly quen that would actually mess us up and we didn't we do banishment okay so that makes our endb even stronger going to B his Gora because it doesn't do anything and gr grenell does um so now we're going to use the Maximus and we need to send Titanic clad and we also can send albon but we're going to send albon with marade so what I'm actually going to do is just send some the GS like um alatus our opponent sends nothing if they did send something he had like their own elvas fusions or like antis and Herold you could consider interacting with it remember the could actually negate one of th monsters if it is a fusion Synchro right because this can negate anything from the extra deck so you could do that given given that it might have been actually better to use Maximus to send Al on there because it's more important that way if we if we had to negate one of their cards we will be able to keep marid yeah so from here it's just going to go set I'm going to go end phase and it's important that we make room so we definitely need to bounce definitely to bounce with Rend room I think the best Target to bounce is the kit here this should be we have elbows in the graveyard already and so I think I good send here is just a card that's going to come back to my hand to use as a disc card so honestly I'm going to send High Spirits we're also going to get a fusion deployment here for [Music] free he spirits and then remember we're not going to trigger cesia because we want to activate miror Jade send albon and the wind gate so there return 10 the kit we need it for followup and this gives us Rome to summon cesia and now we get Alon to trigger and it's going to set Brandon in bread because already drew the banishment so now what we can do very easily is r wly and LU on the opponent's turn the only difficulty is that we have to make room for so the reason we can't do it in the standby phase okay oh the reason we can't do it in the standby phase is because no matter what we summon with Brandon and bread no matter how we use it we're going to have no zones to summon a sanctifier monster to right so what we need to do is wait until they do something then we're going to use like branded in red we're going to use two monsters for Chimera to make room then we can go full sanctifier using one of anal to on the field summon back the ram under branded last okay so this hand we actually have grass okay so this end is really good in general when you draw shrouded plus grass you want to go for grass first there's always a chance that you don't Mill both pieces of a retribution combo so you might as well hold the shrouded in the hand so that you can do that after Sprites and the missing piece you're probably going to Mill a shrouded but it's better to use a shrouded in the hand because it also draw the card whereas in the graveyard it doesn't draw so um another consideration is we could actually use the kead because we could get access to Fusion deployment and then deployment brings out cesia from the deck I don't like that though I think I want to keep the C in my hand but we're going to start with grass and so we did know Saria but before activating it and let's look at the graveyard we have one overas two alas one elas is left in the deck so it can still resolve branded Fusion we know that branded lost real symbol red and banishment so that's our targets for albon gone and there's actually no retribution here which is interesting there high Spurs which can be added back as a discard kit is gone Max mess is in the graveyard but we could still add it back with n if we want to so I'm going to activate the S here this is just going to send aition and now we're going to use the Alon I think to get to brandas in or should we use the cheaper I think I'm going to draw a card I want to draw a card cuz I don't want to discard either of my Clips on my nidea so who do S burn a fusion this way which are another eclipse okay so we don't need to you know the cut is not once per 10 I'm going to add by the Branded Fusion so now that our opponent knows you have branded Fusion there's not a lot of reason for them to hand keeper although it would get to cut easier and that would protect albon or Rebellion from Inon and I think that's important so I'm in discard an eclipse I'm going to search for deployment we still have CIA in the deck which is why we can do this [Music] first um so because we have access to albad in the graveyard we can revive with keeper this a chance that we can go Ren Brom here so we can send mcua to the graveyard and then make albon with cesia that's an interesting line it does play worse into impal so depending on our opponent toles we could maybe just choose to go Alon into lell and into marade here because then we would have the full protection of cesia oras if we go for renr then activate cesia trying to use a face down Albert that we have from keepo we can just get inomed and we can of lose we do have book of eclipse to beat inum although it's not the best book of eclipse it would turn off Al [Music] renr um yeah so so it's it's a choice between playing better into hand TRS or going for a stronger end board I think I'm going to choose to play better into handra so I'm going to go for albon here I'm going to send the last albas or I have to send lellan because we haven't got one in the graveyard [Music] yet and we're going to go do we want to go Rebellion I don't really want to discard one of these I could make Furious Dragon instead so Furious Dragon could make well just furious dragon and then we could summon um Le Bellion we could have to bit cesia there wasn't actually a reason to send a re Bellion but there was nothing else better to send we didn't want to send our one Quin because we need it in the deck I think Furious is kind of good here yeah I I kind of like Furious I have an idea of how I want to play this um V I'm going to use non of the albas so I'm want to use this and this I'm going to summon Furious here and extra mon zone now I'm going to use [Music] keeper I revive ala is not shrouded because it's not Alba well face down has to be the real Alba now I can actually use cesia to make mirade so now we've accessed mirade without needing to discard a cut um we have lellan which contribute Furious but we're not going to do that we're going to just keep the end board like this I think I'm going to use the keeping sorry then the deer um so we're going to send Gora going to add back the Maximus that we ma this is going to draw as a card best kind of draw here would be something like super poly or Maxi which thrust switch sure when not getting hand shaft at this point so that's not the greatest of [Music] draws um we're going to send Maximus here and now we're going to activate so we haven't sent Titanic lead yet so we're going to send that we have S albian we can send a ren bone very easily and we also can access Gran Cano pretty easily through the cesia although would we do we want to do that yes yes we do so on the opponent's turn we want to use the grel as a way of triggering quen so we're going to get Quan here because we just sent Titanic glad right I can't I can't see it but um I think the second sent is this because we're gonna summon Grano on the opponent's turn with cesia with marriage Aid that's going to let aquam revive it that's that's the plan so we're going to send Alva latus and then we're going to set in pass so we have quen we already have albas in the grave yet in fact we have all of our albas in rotation so I think it's important that we get some kind of followup some kind of uh hand Advantage I think so I'm going to send another retribution here because we're going I want to make um lellan right because we want to recycle our albas we've already used all three of them here I'm going to set and what do we want to set branded opening anded sword this could honestly be setting branded sword maybe we should have set retribution with the qu I think that was a mistake yeah I forgot about having B targets already mil we were supposed to set retribution with album not send it to the graveyard with quen cuz then we're going to have to set something kind of useless I think branded sword might honestly be the best answer but maybe we could also just add it to the hand and use it as a disc card there also branded opening which we haven't used yet we could use opening maybe to get some targeting protection I don't hate that idea uh destruction protection I mean yes I'm going to set opening to the field now us have a little bit more survivability and we get to search for deployment here so this is our end board and importantly what we're going to do is once our opponent starts playing we're going to activate marage a and then we're going to use the quen to revive it so I'm going I'm just going to demonstrate that something to consider is if we M right re and or not we did not so that could be our send for Grand canel so here I'm going to use marade I'm going to send renom because we have albas in the graveyard and now we can use cesia [Music] and I'm putting this in defense position because we're trying to play around talents now at this point um there isn't much way to fuse uh to to get the requium into rotation to summon it the only way we can do that now is to um revive albas with renr fuse into like a lellan into a sanctify um but that does require room to be made on our board it does require interaction okay so we can't clear one of our monsters using Furious Dragon however however we actually need two zones available for lellan into sanctifier because we need a zone for sanctifier to actually summon so the way I would maybe go about this it's just a wait yeah it's just a wait for our opponent to clear one of our mosters it's it's an awkward way of doing it but this board is really strong even if we don't get to the requium look we are marting our opponent twice we using Furious Dragon yeah book of the clips it's it's runny storm so I'm not going to show the rest but this is a a very strong end blet and then we could do one more test end okay so we do grass again I don't really want to do it at the grass test end but I suppose we will do it and I'm in the draw phase because we have the option of playing around draw I'm not sure that we need to I think it might be a mistake because again we don't know what we're going to Mill with grass so we don't really know what we want to search either if we send Titanic Le for example with this High Spirits and the we Quin that's going to be a wasted Titanic Le I think we're just going to go to the main phase and resolve grass okay so we didn't get any triggers but we did get some stuff I believe I see we have a rean a branded sword one Al's Mill both rebellions are here red is not available we have opening protection High Spirits is there um it's actually not a lot here is it branded in white yeah it's not a lot here here this is just extra setup if our hand wasn't playable this would be a very unfortunate Mill but I think it's actually fine because we can play so going to start with High Spirits we can basically now go for regular High Spirits plus S one card combo but we have we have bonus cards in the graveyard right to help us out like the Branded Sword and the thebell in the extra albas so this is going to be shrouded Dragon it could also be quen but in this situation even though we haven't had a normal summon I like getting shrouded because plays better into handra right if our opponent has vaa or inom they can stop Quan but they can't stop shed so we're going to send R and no branded fion We join to thust just going to help play through hand traps although we already do have duplication I'm going to add back the Branded Fusion from the graveyard just to check what's in the deck with thrust we have banishment is available Target and that's pretty much it right we don't really have anything else there's banishment and another duplication that's probably how I would have to use this dust just to set banishment yeah so the host is not actually amazing in this situation um and that's her opponent summons a monster to the field so we want to go branded Fusion here one option we have is to send tragedy so that we have access to a normal summon the only problem with that is that branded and white is here so there's not much good targets for alab and we already have quen in the end phase which we don't want to waste so I think we might just go ALB on here albon here would get to it wouldn't be that good I feel like it has to be larian okay so this a creative play yeah that I see because we have the second alas Mel we could send renm for the summon of mellion this got the tactics because we don't need it and then maybe we shouldn't discard the tactics no we should discard the thrust it doesn't really do much like we just said even if they do have a hand trap it's not doing much we already have duplication so we send lellan yeah I I'll show you I think this is the right line instead of searching for alra as a normal Su I'm going to search for cesia right so we going to go like this going to go albon disca thrust oh we're actually going to make a lellan art we're going to make albian with lellan with one of our Al and this is only possible because we have a second alas in the graveyard so what I want to do is banish the Coura and the only way to do that we can't lellan again so it's going to have to be Ren Bren and I'm going to summon in the extra most Zone that's going to trigger Ren brm or the MCA and we going to get to search for cesia here I think cesia is best right yeah I think Kia is best we can't special summon it I believe we don't have one alas so we could know someone this we could get to branded lost we could fuse and then we can trigger that such just for Kit yeah okay so we can access marap this way so we then a normal summon first normal summon pleas around them using impon on the summon of blue Bellion now we're going to bring out branded lost I should also use the Branded sword now we should have done this before we played into neiru so that was a slight mistake I believe that L Bellion here was um was s number five right now the L Bellion was summon number five yeah so so we did need to add back MCA One Step earlier but now that we but now that we bet here we're going to go like this I'm going to use the low Bellion from the Fiel now we're going to activate this one this Chic two it doesn't matter I'm just picking an order and now this can add kit to our hand cuz we've already used shouted and this actually needs to send another shred because we need an El's name in the great so I'm now going to go [Music] kit we're going to add Brandon white from the graveyard I'm going to put that Maxi because we don't need it and then we're use the Branded in white this makes [Music] marid and now instead of using the marriage a on the Branded last I'm going to wait till the end phase so that we can trigger quen I'm going to set duplication and phase we have Titanic Blood that I want to summon a Clen it's important that we don't add back cesia here because we're going to want to revive it so I'm going to send albas cuz we don't have one I'm going to activate albon we don't have Brandon and re we do have banishment I had to give a set [Music] banishment and now we're going to use the marage a we going to send lenus because we already have albon in the graveyard and then we neate I'm going to return the kit to my hand for followup I also kind of need another discard in hand and this can revive got easier and now we get a search for deployment you can see the deployment searches from litus are mainly just discards but they all worthwhile so here because we have reum in the grard what we can just do is duplication right now get rid of the quen breum block our opponent I kind of like that because we don't need this quam so and this going to not over complicated we could summon this directly because we don't need to access the requium and that might have been a thing in the previous hand actually knows I think about it and so yeah I think we're going we're going to go like that because we have the maximus in the deck we're not using these [Music] so um I'm going to this an attack position actually it probably should have been defense position but doesn't really matter um we're not Tri going quen but we are chaining sanctifier during the Branded lost window we're going to Target the recum and then the next thing I think we want is albon or magn I'm going to go magnut I think magnut is more important followup than Alon the only objective here is that we're going to summon a dark [Music] dragon so we can some a r in here and then yeah we're going to summon the dark dragon to our field so that we can fuse it with uh the dark dragon that we search the last right that way cesia can make Furious Dragon to deal with back row or nightmare pain and they can't get rid of the reum so here our opponent is probably losing and we're going to go on to win this game we have so much extra plays even if they do add the luck so yeah U I'm going to do one more just because I didn't want another hand with grass so hopefully we can get a different hand okay perfect this hand is a complete brick we can't actually do anything with this um this C cannot summon itself it's a complete brick I'm pretty sure the best place is to set this in pass so let's do one more hand hopefully we don't brick and hopefully we don't drw grass again okay so this hand is kind of interesting it's pretty different to the hands I've seen this is a very basic hand I can see that we have an Al one card combo so here we can go for any of our Al one card options we can go for marade pass with banishment we can go for the extended line where we send Titanic plad because we're not playing too Grand canol and we're not playing dellia we can't go for the rec what however I I think there's a world in which Maximus helps extend here so what I'm going to do is search for band [Music] Fusion I'm going to go for the regular line [Music] so here the card to discard I think should be thrust because at this point you would have already been hand trapped so I'm just I just got thrust so at any point we actually had Buck of eclipse to protect us from targeting from infer MOA that would have protected everything here even if they used it on the summon of rebellion we would have still got to brand at last if we wanted to um although we probably would not have done that because we want to keep that marij J face up so now this is the one card line we could just pass down we could activate the marage aid and go for the extended line but because we have Maximus I think we're going to use the Maximus so important to note here was swapping out our album the one that cannot be tugged by Ben and but we're we're doing this so that we can also send Titanic lead now we get to set um I think we're also going to set retribution or should we keep this as a discard we do need a discard I think it's probably best kept as a discard in my opinion yeah okay so we're going to go for quen and quen is going to send ala as we need access to alvas we can now revive it with renr and then useo a discard diffuse this can't set vanishment because this is not a Target anymore so I'm just going to set branded in [Music] red and now we have an improved version of the one card combo and board because we drew asmus so moving on I want to now spend a little bit of time talking specifically about the difference FP Gates you can play in branded I have here a list of all the relevant sanctifier targets as well as some other flip Gates that we'll get to later again I'm on edio Pro just so that I can order these into whatever order I want and then also just a reminder that summoning floodgates is mainly done with sanctifier and you're often going to be getting these floodgates into the graveyard with gruel Fusion dation grass or even with branded Fusion itself you can also draw them in your opening hand and then discard them with one of the many discard effects that you have in branded so firstly gimmi puppet nightmare this card is band in master doll and also the TCG but I'm mentioning in any way since it really is the perfect flip gate for Branded that all of these other options are going to be judged against it's also not currently banned in the ocg so there is that the reason why gimi puppet is the best is because it's the only one out of all the options that meets all three criteria for being a really good Floodgate aside from obvious qualities like actually being a Floodgate and being able to be accessed somehow in the Branded engine there are free qualities that make a sanctifier flate really good these qualities are being a lingering effect as opposed to a continuous effect being level six or higher so that it can be accessed by gr grol and being specifically a dark monster so that Fusion duplication can access it by sending it to the graveyard as material formed of Belling it gimi puppet is all of these and to top it off its effect is also completely one-sided and it looks your opponent out of all spater summoning no exceptions the cut is also reusable meaning that you can summon it again on the next turn to continuously lock your opponent all of the combo lines from the spreadsheet that include recum also work for ging puppet and overall if it wasn't for the fact that this card is banned it would be the only sanctifier Target that you ever need this card might be a puppet but as you'll soon see it's these alternative foot Gates that are the ones that really have the strings attached one other small thing to note about puppet is that if you play Sprint in your extra deck it was actually a valid Target for High Spirits since they are both machinein so next is Ido the Supreme Magical Force when summoning floodgates and branded was first discovered this card was considered one of the best options alongside Ra's disciple however looking back it's it's pretty funny how overrated these were in fact Ido is still apparently overrated now since it was banned in mle alongside the gimmi puppet despite there being better floodgates available Ido is a level six dark monster which means it meets two of the three criteria to be a good flate however unlike gimmick puppet Ida's effect to lock your opponent out of summoning is a continuous effect rather than a lingering one at first glance you might think that a continuous effect is better than a lingering effect since it lasts for multiple turns however this isn't really true since continuous effects can be outed whereas lingering effects are a lot more reliable and it's also pretty easy to win the game on your next turn after locking the opponent anyway so you don't really need to worry about having access to a lock for multiple turns if you were to attack your opponent on turn three but not end the game it would require attacking Over The Floodgate and then you could summon it again on the next turn anyway which means it doesn't actually matter whether The Floodgate is continuous or lingering your opponent will be locked for multiple turns regardless once a lingering Floodgate like puppet has resolved there's nothing your opponent can do to reverse it but with A continuous effect like Ido it's possible for them to have an out by using any car that can remove moners from their field like dark hole droplets fing island or nightmare pain Ido specifically also has an additional downside if it's destroyed by by a card Effect it will return to your own field in the next Demi phase and then destroy your whole board what advantage that Ido actually does have over gimmick puppet and over any other flood gate for that matter is that it also stops your Aon up from normal summoning and even normal setting this makes Ido effective against more matchups than other floodgates since it will also stop Decks that are happy to just use their normal summon like Labyrinth flu and stunt not being able to set MERS either makes it slightly easy easier for you to otk on the next turn another advantage of continuous FL gates in general is that they continue to lock your opponent out of summoning during your next turn at least until you attack over it in the battle phase whereas a lingering effect would expire as soon as your opponent's turn ends overall though Ido was just worse than puppet since the advantage of having a guaranteed turn skit without ever having to worry about your opponent randomly drawing it out is by far the most important difference next is DDD Vice King requium unlike puppet and Ido requium is still actually legal and out of all the flood gates currently still legal it's probably the best one rum is the best because it's a granal Target and a dark monster and its effect is also one-sided and covers pretty much everything it does technically allow your opponent to special summon DDD monsters however that isn't going to be a problem unless they're actually playing D and D one small cach to this is that DDD devisor King de machine X is an exceed monster that can just be summoned on top of the requin for free if this happens the recan luck will be outed and your opponent will have a free body to use as Ling material this sounds like a huge flaw for recan however in practice most decks are not going to waste a slot in the extra deck just to play machinex just for the off chance that they play as branded and Ne out the recream look even Decks that have a lot of free space in the extra deck like voiceless voice and Labyrinth are still probably never going to do this since it's arguably still not worth it and many opponents are probably not even going to think about this in the first place that being said if branded ever becomes a popular tier one deck in the future and the standard builds are all playing requium then machine X is actually a pretty good counter that players might start adopting another important quality of requium is that it's a pendul monster recum being a pendulum monster can be a disadvantage since it means that the recum is not reusable as it will go to the extra deck when you attack over it rather than the graveyard however it can also be an advantage the advantage of recum being a pendulum monster is that it's not possible to send it to the graveyard for the cost of droplets meaning the droplets can't out recum once it's on the field it is possible for droppers to out rum or any other fli gate for that matter by negating the sanctifier however as I've mentioned a few T before you can get around this by using sanctifier during a branded lost window and this is something that you'll see a lot when we look at The Floodgate combos next is our called Christia this is another continuous look gate like reum and it's also level eight making it a gruol Target unlike reum though Christi is a light monster which means that summoning it with duplication is a little bit different to access Christin a duplication you're going to have to summon albon instead of rebellion from there you can use either the albon to summon sanctifier or use albon to summon Rebellion which then summons sanctifier if you use albon and Rebellion like this it does mean that the rest of your disruptions are a little bit weaker since you no longer have the option of using ALB on allu Bellion for something else although that would only really matter if your opponent had a way of outing the flood gate another thing to keep in mind when summoning albon and theil like this is the amount of space it takes up on your board between albon rebellion sanctifier and the monster that you want to summon with sanctifier this whole line requires four zones meaning that if your end board has more than two moners on it you're not going to have the space available to do this to get around this you might have to use monsters from your field as material for albon and the bellion's effects and then also keep in mind the difference between albon and Bellion the Bellion can fuse monsters that are banished whereas Alon cannot if you compare this to using a dark monster at your Floodgate like recum it's definitely a lot cleaner to use the dark monster all you have to do is summon Bellion with duplication Bellion can fuse from anywhere even your hand since it requires a discard and this only takes up three zones you also still have albon available for later should you're oppon it somehow out your Floodgate getting back to Christia itself this card is double-sided as it prevents both players from special summoning which means it can actually be summoned to either side of the field as still be affected although if you are going to summon it to your opponent's field it would need to be in defense position so that your opponent can't crash it into something like your mirate Christi also loses to droplets 100% of the time even if your opponent can't mate sanctifier with droplets because you used it in a branded lost window they could still use the droplets on the chrisa itself if is on your field they can use the droplets to negate its effect and if it's on their own field they can just send it away for the cost of droplets to then negate something else on your board and there is also a variety of other outs depending on which side of the field it's on if Christia is on the opponent's feeli then it can be added by most of the same things that rum can be added by like Fire King Island a tribute summon or dark hole and if it's on your own field then any kind of conventional board breaker like breeki or talons can add it as well Christia has a small downside which is its conditions setting that it will return to the top of the deck instead of going to the graveyard this means it is going to break your next draw if it ever happens and that will also make it more difficult to repeat the luck on the next turn since you're going to need to have a way of getting it back into the graveyard if you want to then summon it back and then the last thing to mention about Christia is its summoning condition if you have four fairies in the graveyard exactly you Cann actually see special to summon this from your hand funnily enough though the only fairies in most branded decks are two copies of Alaba and one copy of tragedy meaning it's impossible to get four fairies into the grve yet theoretically though if you were playing a list that had a high count of desp monsters it would be possible to S the Christia for good hand although it would still be pretty rare next is Jan the spiritualist the SC is unique amongst the floodgates as it is AI spellcaster which means it can be sent directly from the deck to the graveyard with branded Fusion for the summon of sanctify this means that branded Fusion on its own or Verte on its own or duplication on its own can set up the flood game I won't spend too much time on Jaan since it is now also banned but I think it's still worth pointing out Jen is only level three so it can't be accessed by granel which is a big downside however Verte being able to set up the foot gate on its own is a uniquely attractive feature of Jan that kind of makes up for the lack of accessibility through gr at the world championship we sold branded exclusively playing Jon as its Floodgate Of choice however I do personally disagree with this Choice I've always thought even back when this card was legal that jagun was inferior to reim since being able to access your foot gate with gruel gives you so much more ageny over how you plan your comos root is not something that comes of every game and as a result playing Jan as your fli gake usually ends up being more incidental and situational than I call parted your game plan Jin has to be summoned to your own field since it does have an effect to destroy your opponent's board so if you give this to your opponent that is going to use it to wipe you a whole L the effect is also not once by 10 so something like branded opening isn't going to protect you from this putting jabin on your own board isn't really a problem though since even though it's very small you can protect your Javin from being destroyed by battle using miror Jade to banish your opponent's monster the V Javin has its on Field Effect and can be normal summoned if you draw it does 10 if we make it a little bit better to draw than other floodgates however this is hardly an advantage since branded disc cost a lot of cards anyway so a hard drone Floodgate is always going to just be used as a discard overall Jalin is not the optimal Floodgate in my opinion it never was and it's now banned anyway next e DD offer this card is interesting since it's the only other flot gate we have besides for gimmick booket that applies a lingering effect as soon as it's special this immediately gets around all of the potential outs that continuous foot Gates have like Island Pain droplets and dark hole and the card is even a dark monster meaning it works pretty well with duplication the part that prevents Alors from being the best available Flo even better than rum is that it's only level four meaning that you can't access it with gruin ofos also still allows your opponent to special summon fiend monsters which means next that you bail Unchained and in the future fi Smith can still make a lot of plays under this Floodgate it also means that any deck that plays tyon has the ability to summon the tyon right away on top of the offers none of these things are a dead sentence for the relevance of offers however it is an unnecessary downside since kak requ and or Christia don't have this issue ultimately though I think it's the fact that you can't assess this card with gruol that makes it suboptimal in my opinion one of the small thing to note about oor is that it's actually technically a hand trap you can summon his card in the battle phase as a blocker which theoretically can be an extra buffer against being otk under maxi since eventually you will draw your offro which makes it slightly harder for your opponent to push for Lal kind of like how the golden Soul so works and then lastly since offers is a fiend you can use it as a highper star Target providing that you are playing quiters in your Extranet next is world's Disciple This cut is the worst option we've talked about so far it's not a gruel Target and it's also a light M his effect is a continuous and it provides no additional benefit this scard is not even a highper his Target either the only advantage that this card has is that its effect is one-sided and its effect has no loopholes like ofous heads your opponent is going to be loged out of all special summoning overall though those advantages don't outweigh the disadvantages in terms of the accessibility of this card R disciple did make a little bit more sense in the past before cesia granal and duplication even existed since the way you would set up a fate at that time was just by sending it to the graveyard with branded Fusion directly there was also no sanctifier and his dead branded expulsion was used to summon the floodgates so next day's nightmare corrup to this is another band card and it actually wasn't even banned because of sanctify however even though it never already saw play as one I was technically a good plug gate to someone would sanctify I is a dark monster and its effect to prevent your opponent from special summoning any monsters other than Link monsters if you're playing against a deck that doesn't play Link monsters then I might as well lck them out of all special summoning and even against ducks that do play Link monsters if all they have to clear the I is a link to then you can easily prevent this by just banishing their normal summon mirade the downside to it is that it can be outed by link ones like linkaro and more importantly it's not a target for gruno one cute play you can make with I is that if you draw it and then make Verte you can actually smash a summon it to your opponent's field with its own effect essentially setting up your own Floodgate for free and then next is perform a pel five rainbow magician this card is a little different from most other cards that we've been talking about as it's not actually a flu gate that you someone would sanctify instead this card actually sets itself up by placing itself with a pendulum zon from the graveyard Whenever you set a spell trap to your field this card work best against super heavy Samurai specifically as the deck doesn't have any spells or traps to set which means your opponent will be lock like using any monster effects on the field or even attacking with them this is pretty much an to win against super heavy Samurai which is why saw a little bit of play during full mats where super heavy Samurai was popular where you get this card into the graveyard is going to be either with branded Fusion grass or duplication and you can also easily trigger its effect to scale Itself by setting a card from your deck with albon during the end phas next is dark simol this card is like gimmick puppet but for backward de his continuous effect prevents your opponent from being able to set any CS which is is going to be gameing against decks like Labyrinth stun paleo and din morphia Simo is a dark monster and it's also a gruel talk which makes it a pretty good flot gate all around the fact that Simo gives a continuous effect rather than a lingering one is also not as much of a downside as it would be for the regular floodgates since the kind of decks that this card would be used against wouldn't normally play those typical outs overall the matchups of this card is got against are too Niche for you to ever considered playing this in your main deck however in a tournament that has a side deck it is something that you could consider especially given that it only takes up one slot in the side deck and then is also Jinzo which is pretty much the exact same as symbol except instead of preventing your oppon up from setting cards it prevents trap cards from being activated Jinzo is a slly better option for going second since it would still be effective against CS that are already set and Fates that are already face up Jinzo with evenly matched imp whereas siml does not JSO is also double-sided so it would prevent you from being able to use trap Cuts as well like banishment and duplication overall if you were going to side one of these I think either one is fine personally I prefer the dark simol generally though you don't see floodgates for backro decks like this being played anyway and well I think a lot of the reason is that players just have never thought about it it is true that branded has a pretty easy time winning when it goes first against those backro decks anyway so it might not be worth a slot in your side day next up is Chanel Schism and by extension shadal window this is an option you can clim branded that is surprisingly underused in my opinion the way you access window is by sending app cologne to the graveyard with Grano which then searches for shidel Schism from there all you need to do is get a dark monster into your graveyard or have it on your field and you can then use the Schism to some window on the opponent T the advantage of this over a regular sanctifier Floodgate is that you only need to access grol to have access to it which is a lot easier than also summoning a sanctifier if you consider gains where your branded Fusion ISS ashed for example it can often still be pretty easy to resolve a cesia after that to get to grol however getting all the way to sanctifier as well as grol in order to set up a foot gate is a lot less likely since W can win a game by itself this can be a good backup plan to have for when you can handri you can also send AB colog to the graveyard with Nida servant and of matical Maximus so there potentially a lot of consistency that you can have for getting to wind overall the main downside of wind is that it requires a lot of extra dech space app colone and wind are the minimum that you have to play but you can also sometimes play chadel construct as a way of making the combo slightly better and is a way of flushing out the shidel engine so that it has more versatility either way using just two of your extra deck slots for this is still very expensive and for me personally it's always the reason why wind never makes it into any of my serious deck lists one thing to remember about using Schism is that it does actually have an extra description attached onto it when you summon window you also get to send a dark master that your opponent controls to the graveyard for free at the same time and then next I have dimensional barrier summon limit and Skil these are here just because they are floodgates and they are technically ailable in branded the barrier is an optional Target for thrust but if we're also talking about side decks then it's reasonable to side all free copies summon limit is a car that you can side pretty easily if you make a decent end board and then back it up with a summon limit you're probably going to win the game instantly but if you do ever have to play under your own summon limit Brandon would be a better deck at doing that than a lot of other decks would be assuming you have a setup in the graveyard already you can still resolve Brandon Fusion to summ Al be on Old Rebellion which then summons a boss monster like marade of furious and this is only two summons meaning that you can play pretty well under that summon skill drain is playable purely because your endp monsters are so big the idea with skill drain is to instantly win the game by setting up a board and then flipping a Flo gate that your opponent cannot do anything about even though it also stops you the finding you have big Masters on the board already is going to be enough to give you a game-winning advantage and then lastly I also have brand of exposion here because it is also a card that we've used in the past to set up floodgates before it got banned exposure most typically used to summon gimmick puppet but also often Ido and R disciple since the maor Branded at the time was a little less powerful than it is now so being able to lock your opponent for multiple times was actually sometimes necessary and exposion also wasn't as reusable as Sanctified so if we now go back to the spreadsheet and take a look at these Floodgate combos we can get an idea about how you might use these floodgates in practice okay so scrolling down to The Floodgate section here we can see that we have one combo here Alaba plus High Spirits plus albas plus one disc cut and this can end on a pretty reasonable board just like most of the other combos Bard also a sanctifier and a requ mark So this combo looks like this this y so you can see that this endboard has the sanctifier pre-made in the end phase rather than waiting for the opponent's time this is because we can actually access the Branded in Red without using albon so it's actually safe it into cold by the grave so that we can use the Branded in bread an hour tan by accessing it with retribution and then the albian can actually set Brat's blazing branded King which means that we can negate called by the gra on our requium when we try to use scentifier we can also maybe negate droplets under certain circumstances okay so next is ala plus deployment plus one discard this is another very similar board that is going to end on a recre Lu you can see that this is a combo from earlier on in the spr sheet we can probably see it all the way at the top here Alaba plus deployment right there is a regular line that you can go for here however this is a version that actually allows you to get to a Floodgate so you can see that we're going for the reum Lu here during the standby phase so that we can better play around something like a lightning storm or a evenly mat I guess um so yeah going to St my facee Works what's the best in in general um and we can also get the search from a courier earlier on as well putting albon on your field is just to have resources you're expecting your opponent to El locked so you might as well worry about resources as opposed to disruptions when it comes to your own kinds um next is aliver and Rebellion this is a good combo that ends on a really strong board here is how you can tailor the combo to working specifically um to set up a flip gate so here you will have noticed that we relied on Quin to revive alaz and then fuse it away into lellan that is how we were able to get sanctifier to ultimately get to the reum block if quem didn't resolve then we wouldn't be able to get here at least not right away um but it still would be okay because our end board still does have marade and ren bur available um next alra poly belly and post blond discard this is almost the exact same thing but this is allowing us to disc got a cut so you'll notice here that we made use of the mirade chain Ren brm chain or bounce the kit back to our own on hand this was pretty good as it allowed us to better play into disruption that our opponent might have been saving and you'll also notice that we used sanctifier under the burned lost window to better play into responses next is aliper and requium this card looks like this you can see here that we're going to use a dead marade this is a one card line you might recognize the end board for being the one card combo that uses requium as its discu so this combo was relatively easy on the opponent's turn all we have to do is resolve the cesia and as soon as our opponent lets that cesia resolve we have the lock guaranteed as we're going to go straight into sanctifier and then trigger the the Branded lost and use the sanctifier effect during the Branded L win next is Nadia plus one discard so one Nadia servant can actually get you to a recre w and this is how you do it so you can see in this combo made use of Lulu willit it's back in the extra deck now but we did use Lulu willit um without it then this combo line isn't possible next is Aliva plus branded in red this is again a very basic combo that you might expect from um a normal branded deck and it makes a pretty normal end board but you can also tailor it to make sure that it always ends on a reum look if you want to okay so it's pretty much just making use of the fact that if you hard draw the Branded in red then you can use branded in red on the end board in addition to a regular one cut combo which is able to access the rein next is another combo this is foolish plus browned and red plus one discard you'll not is that this is exactly the same and board and it makes sense because this is basically the exact same requirements the only difference is that it is stly better because you have tragedy in the grave yet so here on this combo you can see that we actually got to reset the marade so this marade is actually live as well um next is cesia plus any dark monster so this is actually an example of a window lock showing you how you can get to window using granel it is important that you have the dark monster because you do need the dark monster material for the window next is another one this is the DS servant how one the DS servant can set up window and this this combo looks like this so you can see that by sending myua with quen we're actually get a useful banish with the Schism we can Bish this as dark monster and that allows us to get a search for next time um next is qu plus cesia this hand surprisingly can also achieve a recum Lu and this combo looks like this [Music] okay so again we're going for the SEC to file up during the standby phase whenever possible just to play around things like lightning St um next is branded Fusion plus one discard this is a pretty interesting combo um well it's interesting because of how lame it is but this is honestly overlooked if you are playing some chadel in NOC it is possible to just branded fuse for a window directly or not directly but making use of Lu Bellion this is pretty bad and you would never do this with branded Fusion but theoretically you can um and then next is branded Fusion plus three discards this is the actual way that you can get to wind using branded Fusion this is probably the the more realistic combo line that you would go for so this is basically the same requirements as the previous combo except we're actually going to use more discards and now we actually get to a realistic endb so on the opponent's ter what we can do is use the shidol kism Bish the app cologne and the tragedy or maybe the app cologne and the albon to summon window that way we can still use the tragedy as a target for Branded red and whenever we summon from the extra deck we can also use quen to revive this miror and then the last combo I have here is Alaba this is also shown at the very top of the combo this is here as the the one card po combo with just Alaba this is actually possible to it's actually possible to reum lock using just Alaba and this combo goes like this [Music] so this is a pretty interesting combo the reason why it's not very common is that it does require two grand grenolds in the extra deck and it also requires you to be playing TR to pellia and they are both not mandatory you can cut ders to pellia and you can also cut a second grino but if you are playing them then this line is technically possible and yeah that's it for the fet combos there's definitely more as you can see it says here that many of the combos above so all of these from the rest of the spreadsheet also have the ability to requium look you just have to deliberately go out of your way to do it the reason why most of these comos don't do it is because it's not essential to winw branded and it's actually more optimal most of the time to not go out of your way for it and just focus on setting up things like marage Leed and followup and light and darkness Dragon things like that before we move on to the mech section I want to briefly mention these cards here here this is a list of a bunch of obscure floodgates that are technically viable targets for sanctify some of these are just bad versions of the ones we've already talked about like the barrier statues and the ojet and the Scythe but there is also some more interesting ones that actually don't lock the opponent out special summoning but instead lock them like dark angel for example out of something else Dark Angel locks them out of using spells bisher of the radiance and banish of the light both have macrocosmos effects to banish any card sent to the graveyard thunder king can prevent from searching and Invader of darkness is an interesting count to rooing decks specifically it also count as pearly as well and of Anubis is pretty interesting against Tia and 60 car paleo and also chaos Hunter and lencia are pretty good against ritual Beast they're also going to be pretty good against malice when met comes out as well you might notice that some of these are not actually light or dark monsters like Wang who and this barer statue however they are technically still accessible in the Branded engine as they could be sent to the graveyard with branded Fusion or duplication for the summon of rendr Lancia and conty I felt work uniquely interesting since both of these cards you could theoretically be playing as part of your non- engine anyway depending on the format so if these cards are ever in your deck and they end up in your graveyard because you used them earlier in the game it's possible to make use of them as an improvise sanctify a Floodgate later on must change too is something I also thought was pretty cool you can use this to summon dark L as part of your end board which is actually going to beat a lot of decks by itself I think this idea is underexplored and it's something I want to look into a little bit more myself although I suspect that it's only going to be cut going first theoretically though you can use Mass change 2 to dodge imper on your aliber and that is a really really strong play and then the last thing that I just had to include is this really funny combo that uses Necco main king and queen angel of roses there's no standard combo in branded that can access these cards but theoretically if you were to get both of these pieces into the graveyard you can use sanctifier in the drill phase to put necro main King on your field and the Queen angel of roses on the opponent's field in standby phase the queen angel of roses has a mandatory effect to destroy the smallest m in the field which is going to be the necom Ming once the necom Ming is destroyed its effect activates and it then becomes the end phase so you end up skipping your opponent's 10 it's completely impractical but I wanted to mention it just because I think it's pretty cute so that's it for the flowgate section I think the main thing to remember is that re is overall the best replacement for gimmick puppet but there are still some other interesting foot Gates that are worth considering anyway let's now move on to the next section where I'm going to talk specifically about the non-engine cars that you can play in Brandon all right so the next thing I want to talk about is the different non-eng cards you can play and branded in general non-engine cards are included in every deck to some capacity and the exact ones that you play are format dependent it makes sense that ning cards depend Less on your own deck and more on the method Decks that you're going to be playing against since they interact with your opponent's cards and not really your own cards for this reason which non-engine cards you play in branded is always going to be affected more by the matter at the time than any of the arguments I'm about to make for them now so keep that in mind when I go over them so firstly Maxi Maxi is kind of the single best card in the game but there are actually some interesting points to make about Maxi in branded specifically so this is actually the most complicated card to discuss branded likes to draw a lot of engine cards especially going first but also going second too ideally you want to be drawing three or four engine cards and just one or two non-engine cards if you draw more than two non- engine cards you're pretty likely to Breck or at least get stopped by by a single disruption this is why Branda tends to play less non-engine cards than other decks because of this there's an argument for playing high impact going second cards like super poly droplets or even neiru over the more common low impact cards like Ash impr and vea most of the time a single low impact handp will not be enough to stop a deck from playing by itself but a single high impact card might be able to since you're only playing enough non-engine in branded to draw one or two most of the time you'd rather it be a high impact card so that it has more chance of actually stopping the opponent low impact cards like Ash imper and vea are generally stronger in De to play enough non-engine cards to reliably draw multiple of them like SN or Centurion Maxi is technically a high impact card but only when it resolves sometimes Maxi would just be negated by Ash or cold by the grap which makes it super low impact when it happens this means that on average Maxi is actually closer to a low impact handra rather than a high impact one often you'll go second with branded with nothing but Maxi and the opponent W negated then you're just a c down watching your opponent full combo with no other hand traps hoping to top deck the one perfect board breaker that deals with their board because of the amount of cards and branded that require discards you also really feel the weight of being a card down and with branded being pretty strong at breaking board with this engine it is easy to think sometimes that playing a more reliable card that is guaranteed to have some impact every time I droplets instead of Maxi would result in more games being winnable you could also make the argument that branded doesn't make good use of Maxi when it goes first either since the end boards that this deck makes usually have enough power and followup to win the game on their own in the end though I think Maxi is still just too good not to play it helps in slow games and it's one of the only cards you can play that has the potential to stop any combo deck no matter how many extenders they have when you go first with maxi it's a pretty good way to force the opponent into using their cold by the grave which would have otherwise been a pretty good card at pushing through the O end board it also fills the specific role going second of sometimes taking Ash out of the opponent's hand meaning that they don't have it for your branded Fusion on the next tank there is one exception to this and that is fire Decks that play some light wolf like Snake Eyes or sometimes rescue a these decks are able to use ash on your Maxi and then added back to their hand with wolf meaning that they can use it again on your brand of fusion this means that against those decks specifically Maxi's actually a little bit worse of a card going second anyway though overall I could get is still worth playing Maxi in most lists just to be aware that there are actually good arguments to play other non-engine cards instead of it so if you ever do see a branded list that is not playing Max C this isn't a dumb oversight this is actually a pretty reasonable Choice next is Ash Blossom Ash is important in branded for negating Maxi when you go first even though you have a few good plays into Maxi you'd still rather not have to deal with it so playing three Ash to give yourself the best chance of outing Maxi is a very good reason to play it as a standalone hand chap going second though it is pretty low impact so the chances of it being enough to stop your opponent from playing are pretty low I like playing Ash but it is reasonable to not play it because of how weak it is especially considering that you're not likely to draw it alongside any other hand traps and so you can instead use that space for on packed full non-engine card like gamma talents or droplets keep in mind that in order to negate Ash with cross out you do need to be playing some number of Ash yourself so if you want to max out on your ability to play through Ash you are going to need to play at least one copy of it in your deck another thing about Ash is that it is a very safe description against tempai as it cannot be invalidated by any combination of board Breakers or sanken summoning it's also really good against the mirror match and against labrin so depending on what's popular in the format or if you're playing with a side deck Ash is definitely still good to have next is imp there's not much to say about imp it's always going to be fine and thumb is very reliable and dra is probably the most reliable card in the game since it can't be negated by Cold buy it doesn't play into th St talents it works in multiples and it is still good as your six card not to mention it hits pretty much every deck it is relatively bow impact but its reliability does somewhat make up for that I don't think it's great in branded since it's not high enough impact but it's definitely not a mistake to play imper in any amount I like playing one copy in my 60 card list sometimes so that I can set it with thrust and negate it with cross out next is Veer Bor is kind of like imperm except it's a little bit worse in every way it plays harder into all the cards that imperm avoids failer is also bad it's your si cut and it can be used as a Thrust tying it is overall a little too low impact that being said veiler can actually be sometimes useful over imp pal in Brandon specifically because it's a monster B can be no more summoned to help make FY it's also a spellcaster which means it's a target for High Spirits and because it is a light spellcaster specifically you can actually use it as material for sanctify this can be relevant for duplication plays as well as times where you have both quam and cesia on your field and you're only playing one of each next is gamma gamma is really good and branded in my opinion at least before it was limited to one the main reason for this is that it's a high impact hand shap that can often stop your opponent by itself gamma can sometimes be used for going first as most opponents will not respect gamma against branded and you can occasionally use it to play around Ash on your branded feat gamma is known for being bricky since you have to play driver and if you go first and set up a board gamma is in your hand completely dead however in branded specifically these are both less of a problem since so many of your cards require a discard anyway and you're never really relying on the power of non-engine cards after you've set up a board since Gamera is limited it makes sense that you wouldn't play it anymore however I do think that it's not unplayable still in granded branded has a lot of ways to discard dead cards so the cost of playing the one driver isn't felt nearly as much as it would be in other decks nabiru is an interesting card this one more so than really any of the other cards is a extremely format dependent there's usually a use for cars like asala and imperm even in the formats where they aren't good however neiru has the potential to be either game-winning or literally unplayable so for niru specifically the full mat is by far the most important factor in determining whether or not you should play this that being said Nibiru does have a few qualities that branded specifically appreciates it's high impact meaning it can carry a game by itself and even against Decks that usually play play forab beu it is still potentially useful since branded has a really good ability to break mediumsized boards with its engine against mathme for example this card is always really good a regular full combo for mathme usually wins the game versus branded however any Bard that they can set up after being hit with Nibiru is probably easily breakable another thing to keep in mind about Nibiru is that it's a light monster which means it can be used as material for cars like cesia and just by having it available in your deck you have the option of making a bigger Titanic lad than you would have other way the last thing that's really important to know about Theo and branded is that it's really really good going first against pretty much any deck that tries to otk you besides for tempai niru is a good way of ensuring that you will survive the 10 branded is already pretty difficult to otk since it has a lot of floating and protection not to mention disruptions and adding an abiru to that makes it pretty much impossible branded has really good followup even if you neir you're un bored so you're not losing much when you do this either having theu in your deck also means that it's much more scary for your opponents to try an otk you on Maxi next up is Ghost Bell ghost spell is hardly ever played in branded and it makes sense since the card is just very niche in general and it only really sees play in very specific formats or in Decks that are playing so many hand traps that they're already maxing out on the better ones if Ash veiler and imperm are low impact hand traps then ghost p is very often a very low impact handra you wouldn't really play this in branded except as maybe a side Deck card for Labyrinth it is interesting to note though that this card can neate cold by the grave and bals which are so of the best outs to your endboard power plays like branded in bread and rer and then we have bals I have VRE and Dr s I'm here to represent that the idea of playing extra B deals that are part of your non-engine brandit is always going to be clean Sania and usually Magnum out anyway as part of its engine but the other bis deals are completely optional bis deals have the advantage of synergizing somewhat with your engine as they can be used as good targets for High Spirits and they can also do small things like banish mcua or tragedy from your graveyard you can also use them as material for Verte sometimes as well overall though as a non card it needs to be effective against your opponent and bals are not good against every deck so you are better off playing on more generic non-engine card than more Bisal I think this is a trap that a lot of players fall into when they first build branded just because the bals are technically part of your archetype according to the law doesn't mean that they are worth more in your deck than something like imperm or Ash would be you can side B deals but decks like mathme Labyrinth and fiend Smith once it's released but and unless the format is full of decks that lose the B deals you're probably done with remain decking a whole bunch of them next is dra and lot bird this is another card that is extremely format dependent like the biru droll has high impact which makes it a good choice for Branded however it does only work in the right matches it is a High Spirits Target though and it is generally just a good card to side deck droll is known for being really good against the Decks that it's good against but also really bad against the Decks that it's bad against because of this it makes it extremely hard to want to choose to main deck this card even if there is decks in the for that really lose to it DD Crow is next this card is not often pling branded but in the right situation it can be good it is a dark monster which means it can be used with cesia and it's also a winged Beast so it's a decent Target for High Spirits as well unlike the spellcaster hand traps like drol and Veer a winged Beast High Spirits Target is actually a little bit better since sending Ren to the Great is usually better than sending gruel sending RBM is more useful if you get hand trapped and since it's an albas Fusion it means you can use kits effect to special summon itself giving you the option of making verting or extending to a hand trap on your normal sumon Crow is pretty good as a side Deck card against decks like the mirror match pearly mathake and tment and it is also some sometimes played against tempai not because it's really effective but just because it's one of the only cards that can do anything at all so next is some board Breakers starting with super poly super poly has always been exceptionally good in branded specifically since it doesn't require the opponent to summon all of the materials themselves this means that it's good in way more matchups than if you had to played Super poly in a different deck and branded most of the time you want to use this to summon miror Jade if you can using ALB along with one of your opponent's monsters even when you don't draw ALB you can usually try to access it through something like deployment High Spirits or mcu's banish effect in order to make that super poly really Li super poly plus albas is often the only out you have to really strong end boards from decks like super heavy Samurai manium and pendulum and the fact that this card is also extremely impactful going first makes it a really attractive card to play M dragon and Gora are also playable as generic targets with super poly mad dragon can be summoned using Baron and appala for example and Gora can be summoned with two elaborate monsters for example super pulley in general is a really good card to use and I think a lot of branded players actually make the mistake of having too much allegiance to this card it's not actually mandatory to play and if the format isn't right for super poly then it is reasonable to cut this cut in general though super poly is a staple in branded and it's not really ever an actual mistake to play it in your deck next is evenly matched this card is also really good and branded you can comfortably mainake this in a lot of formats and it will be very strong it goes without saying that decks without an omn negate on the end board will get completely sweeped Away by evenly matched like rescu ritual beast and sometimes youell so this card is definitely pretty good going second it's also not that bad to draw going first since you can easily just use it as a discard evenly is a Thrust Target too so you can also choose to play just one copy rather than three with the intention of searching up with thrust or if the card is actually really good in the format you can play all three copies and then have access to six copies given that you also play three thrust forbid in droplets is good and branded this card is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about when I say that high impact cards are better than low impact kinds droplets has the ability to win a game by itself whereas cths like Ash and impire are much less likely to droplets is also perfectly playable when you go first just like super poly so it fits very nicely into a branded deck dropless does require discards a lot of the time so there is some conflict there since you already have a lot of good discard effects especially when you go second however droplets can send cards from the field as well so you can somewhat get around this sending something like ala or keeper as the cost for drops so that you can Dodge in and baa is also a really good use of a card thess you also deal with an opponent's end board and some of their non-engine at the same time Talent is an interesting card in branded most of the time I don't like playing this card since it's really only good as a board breaker going second and it's pretty weak going first the reason why I don't like talents going first in branded is that it doesn't really help you play after getting ashed on your branded Fusion if you draw two cards after getting ashed there is a pretty good chance that the cards you draw still don't help you set up a board at all and if you looked at the opponent's hand instead Hing to take away their only starter you can get punished TR easily by your opponent just having more than one starter in their hand since so many decks play with one card combos now attempting to take away their only starter is a very unreliable strategy in my experience so overall Talent is just kind of bad for going first it is pretty good going second as it can be used to help outk Force disruptions or potentially refill your hand all of which can be useful it's also a Thrust Target so you can get away with playing just one as an option that you can search I mentioned earlier in the deck list section that I don't think talents is actually necessary to play since branded specifically has so many other good thrust targets that are most of the time going to be even better than talents like grass branded Fusion branded in white and fusion duplication next is dark roller no more this card is something that usually only sees playing side decks however you can occasionally play it in the main deck since it can be essential for certain formance and it can be a oneof for a Thrust as well drawing the scarling F can be mitigated by discarding it just like eily matched and in general Brandon is not a deck that really beads any non-engine cards to back up its board as it m boards are usually strong enough on their own I don't personally like this card very much I prefer to just site it as a silver bullet against certain Decks that make end boards that are weak to it Foss is theoretically pretty good and branded Foss tends to create this Dynamic where de will make mediocre and boards on the fo and give you a couple extra draws in the process this is perfect for Branded as the mediocre B that your opponent makes is playing right into Brandon's hands as a powerful Engine with board breaking capabilities and the extra cards you get help to eliminate the chance of pricking that being said Foss can be negated by all the same cards that Max SE can so it might be that in practice F Los in masteral is just the same thing as maxi where it gets bated too often to consider it a high impact hand overall though just like Maxi FAS will probably get played in the deck you can mitigate the fact that the card is bad going first by using it as a discard the card is also a winged Beast which makes it a target for High Spirits was this card at released you'll probably go on to play it in branded and then the last card I have here is the black go laughs this card is the most interesting one in my opinion is that a handr or really a board breaker but is nonetheless still a non-engine card and it is a car that can work as a disruption going first and as a tool to help break a board going second the nice thing about black goat is that you can discard it and still get the value from it this is something that no other non-engine C can doing branded so it's pretty unique and efficient in that regard it also add extra power to your grass and it is also technically a Thrust tug overall I think black goat is really good and branded the only issue is that it's a pretty low impact card which means it doesn't really fulfill a role that you won from a non-engine cut and so shouldn't really be taking up the non-engine slots in your deck if I was going to play Black go I would be trying to cut engine cards for it so that I can still have as much room for my usual non-engine but anyway that's it for the non-engine cards there's more to say about these cards in general but I wanted to keep the discussion relevant to branded specifically remember that Above All Else the levance of Any Given non-engine card depends on the format and even the amount of non-engine cards that you need to play in your deck is format dependent as well anyway now that we have all the main theory for going first covered I want to move on to talking about some advice specifically for going second but before that let's go over a couple of example games that bring all of these ideas for going first together in practice okay so now we have this opening hand here you see we have a prettyy good Hound of engine cards we have foolish barrial was opening which is already a roomy strong and void um but we also have grass which is pretty good our opponent has a 40 card deck so we're going to m a lot of cards with this um we won the coin flip so we don't have any idea what our opponent is on but we do know it's a 40 card deck we also have book of eclipse and Maxi which means we have a really good hand it doesn't be maxi from our opponent but he does play through hand trats pretty well and it makes a really strong end board with the engine backed up by some pretty good non-end so what I actually decide to do in this game because foolish burial was opening and on such a combo by itself um I actually decide to use the grass as a discard because I don't want to run into the possibility of having a bad na with grass needing to discard one of my engine uh non-engine cards for opening and just being in a bad situation right if we know banishment and um branded in red right the albian sockets then we could be in a bad situation for no reason if we know a quam and cesia they're not so easy to get back so I decideed not to risk it and just use the grass as a discard for opening um the reason I'm in the draw phase is because we want to know if I'm I'm going to play around Jo and vea right we can use opening in the draw phase and that beats in sorry it beats vea and droll from my opponent it doesn't beat imp pom um but it does beat vea and drill we can go for Alaba and then foolish can go for something like Quam in the end though what I actually decide is not to do that I decide to go for the phase and start with the foolish the reason for this is because we actually have the grass as a followup so if it wasn't for this grass if this was another brick let's say this was another M sea activating opening would be better first because you want to bait your opponent into imp perming the Quin right because if you start with Al and it gets impounded opening for qu does not extend it doesn't anywhere you can't make Verte because you're locked and there's nothing you can send with the qu that helps however if you start with the opening and then that gets impounded the quam you can nor almost aliber and that will extend so if it wasn't for the grass we would actually start with the opening it plays worse into Maxi but it plays better into input however in this case we're going to play well into both because we have the grass if I if our El get get impounded here we can just use grass and then opening is going to be pretty good at extending because we we get to resolve grass and what happens is we don't get imp Pals so we get branded pigion and here we decided that we're going to discard the grass so we're going to start with the uh the Branded fusion and our opponent chains Maxi we were going to chain opening to this anyway because we want to go for a line where we send mcua with quen and then ban sh with albian however because they're a point chained Maxi you be get to chain to that and cheat out one of our monsters before they disolve so we're going to discard the grass and we're going to summon the Quan the reason we discard the grass is because we're not going to be doing much under maxi so we want to keep our non-engine cards right we want Maxi and Eclipse we don't know what our opponent is playing but these are pretty generic cards it's likely that these are going to be good um and then as usual under maxi with with Planet Fusion you're going to want to make sanctifier and I put it in the extra monster Zone just to allow for as much space on the board as possible and I put it in defense position to play around um lightning storm uh what is that to use the quam yeah because by giving one more draw to summon cesia you actually set up a re right you can use the cesia on the aon's turn to S send with Gran gral and that can send requium then sanctifier can revive [Music] it and then I send Mya here because the chances are if I'm going going to go for a requim look and it results then we're probably not triggering quen right except for when we use the Grand grel and at that point the only thing I want to do is revive a mura because it's a monster neate on the board as well as in the hand right you can send it from the field so I just want to rebor that to the field with quem and then put the rec cram on their field that's that's the game plan we're not able to do anything in the standby phase because cesia is main phase only so we have to wait for our opponent do something our opponent here decides to destroy monsters instead of the backrow which I find a bit weird but to be completely honest it does force the cesia um I think this is a misplay regardless I'm not sure what they were thinking but technically it forces the C easia because we don't want to fuse the qu right if you want to revive the mcua we don't want to fuse the qu so we would want to Fe the Alber instead but I set to let it go because I have Maxi um and then our sanctifier gets um tributed for Santa Claus so luckily enough this cut is a light molster which means we can still fuse with cesia and and then something interesting about satif fire is that it obviously mentions albas because all it's fusure material right so CL can actually revive it um our opponent were is at the Ping tempai so this is a pretty bad situation book of eclipse is not good versus tempay when they have sunen summoning and Maxi isn't good either so our wing condition here is to resolve the sanctify look right so what we could do is use cesia used the Santa Claus and then make gr quinol and use Quan to revive the sanctifier um the reason we don't do straightaway is cuz I want to play around gamma so I wait for my opponent to commit a monster first I like the chain was all genroku was pretty good for us here because you have myy so we're going to rec like the opponent but we can get a few draws out of it first I decid to use cesia right away and if you use the Maximus that we just drew we don't need a discard in hand and just in case our opponent has a c by the Graze for reim or sanctifier um I decide to keep the Santa Claus on the board because it does have you know a defense position body so just anything that makes it slightly harder for tempai to kill you might be worth it so we do get to make the Rango the chances are if I repo had forbidden droplets they would use it on cesia especially um yeah they would probably use it on cesia but especially now Grano once we revealed that we got rid of the card in our hand right they now know pretty much everything except for this last back row so the chances are if they had droplet they would use it here they would also get to negate clam at the same chain if they have two cards to send so this would be a very high value droplet the F they don't chain pretty much confirms that they don't have it it also confirms that they don't have magnate or that they don't have cold by however is still technically not confirmed because they could know that we're going to requium and they're holding for the this card specifically so on resolation we just use the sanctifier right away we target Mera just because this is going on our field we might as well put the negate just in case and a new chain goroku here so this is actually a very interesting moment because we have book of eclipse the way this works is that we can still technically lose to droplets here if him responds to albon our opponent used forbidden droplets they could negate Al right they're could to get our sanctifier and that would prevent the luck however if they sent a monster or a trap we could chain book of Eclipse which would put our ALB on face down and that would allow us to resolve the recor however because they chained genin Roku now what we could do to play around but B to play around droplets completely is activate the book of eclipse now this is a really cute interaction so what would happen is if we change book of eclipse to G Roo even if our opponent then changed droplets to negate stif fire the book of eclipse would flip the stif fire face down before it reses which actually allows it to resolve even though it's already been negated by the droplets I don't chain but I actually should have chained just to ensure that there was in droplets and then at this point our opponent can't do anything the last chance for them to use droplets was in response to sanctifier it it's now too late they can't send the recum for cost because it's a pendulum monster and and now to I can't do anything we trigger the gr grol just to summon kitis and our opponent can't do waiting here so they [Music] surrender so this game is versus a 60 card T element pile snake eye deck and we're going first and you'll noticed the first thing that you'll notice in this end is that we have Alaba and opening so the Alaba plus opening combo is really strong should end on this end board here and you'll also notice that we have shrouded and branded and white which are actually two engine pieces that can used in the combo so alot plus opening combo actually uses these the shrouded is used to send branded sword to the graveyard so if we're going to use this shrouded it should be to send branded sword so that we can can so that we can go for the combo as as it says in the spreadsheet we also have Ash to help play through Maxi we have opening to help extend a little bit Su hand Chas brand and white could extend into hand traps another consideration is to activate opening in the draw phase this is always something to think about um because he had aliper already though doesn't really do anything we don't we don't play our end rooll by using Miss in the draw phase because we're could we're just going to be summoning qu right so there's no suchar um we could still do it outside of the main phase though to play around bayor so that our Quin doesn't get Bor however if we summoned quen in the draes to play around Bor and then noral summoned alra the alra would get veiled and it's actually better to have our quen get veiled or in P than Al so if we were going to start with this combo I would start with the opening and I would do it in the main things uh I think that's the timal way to play this hand however we we actually misplay we start with the shrouded what we should have done is recognize that we need this as part of the combo um it's not too much of a misplay to use it right away but if we were going to use it now we have to be sending braded soul and I actually don't I send retribution which is a misplay so now the condo has to be improvised a little bit is technically okay though because we have we have the Branded in white right so we can make use we can make use of sending W tribution is a sword in a way that you'll see later and then we go into a useless card which is the keeper It's s a dendon normal summon um now that we have retribution in the gra good it's actually correct to noral summon Alaba before opening because if we get imprim or Veet on Alaba the qu is actually better because it can send branded Fusion which we can get get to with retro region and then it also has its second effect to tr later on in the [Music] turn so we send we chain open to branded Fusion this is because we wanted to resolve Quin the full albon results right we want to banish mcua in this line from the graveyard with Albi and the reason we're chaining is just to plan a little bit better around Maxi we technically have Ash so we didn't need to respect Maxi um so maybe maybe that was wrong although it's it's still correct to play around it like this because you never know they can gamble your ass or they could they could potentially not Ash branded Fusion because they bricked and they really want to Max Theo brand the fusion to get a draw so there's always that possibility as well but this resolves we just got the keeper because we need the other cards and we're going to summon albon Rec send cut easy here because that's how you play this line albian has to be chaining one and then quen has to be chaining two because we need to send the C we need to send the MCU to the graveyard and then banish it with [Music] alium so here we have gro we have to summon it in the extra monster Zone because we're going to run out of space in the main zones if we don't use the extra monster Zone here um and we banish in the ca so that that triggers we're also going to trigger the Quan because we need albas on the field and then we send sarin so the reason we sent sarin is because we messed up the combo of ear we made the mistake of activating shrouded usually in this line what happens here is that the grand Coral sends sends lellan and then lellan tributes albian brings out branded laws and we have the shrouded such and for the shrouded s instead of K right so we have AA such a shrouded instead of Kit in this combo because we already used our shrouded getting kit um but that means we don't get to branded sword because we need branded sword in the regular line we need trout of dragon to do that and we need to add bite the cesia the only other way to get to that is to send s into the graveyard which then sends branded sword so that's what we're going to do now the reason this still works is because we HDE your the Branded and white so what we can do is use kit to search for Branded lost instead of branded and white and then it's the same thing we just we just missed out on a free kit search which we would have had if we had done the combo correctly so we're going to use the Branded sword we add back the cesium and now we're going to special summon it and then here I make probably the biggest mistake for some reason instead of marade I just make Furious this is supposed to be marade um in the regular line you use the gr grol but using the albon is important too because in this particular version that we played we didn't tribute Alon with the Bellion so it's important that we fuse it away um but this can still make Mery and that's what we should have done but for some reason I decided to make Furious Dragon instead now we use the kit and we're going to add the Branded lost we also made another mistake because kit is going to have to put back a card to the deck and we could have to put back the ash Blossom here because we had retribution in the graveyard like we should have done is Chained retribution to kit to add back something like branded fusion and yeah we should add back the Branded fusion and then put that back into the deck so that we can keep the ash Blossom to make our end board stronger um what I want to add by the opening because this is protection in the graveyard we rather have this in the graveyard and um and then another thing that we messed up is the placement of the zones we should eventually put ala where the kit is because in the regular line um we're going to summon renr right we're going to summon Ren brm and that would have to go in this animal zone if we if we didn't the combo correctly but because we haven't it doesn't actually matter here and now I have to put back the ash so that was a mistake now we can activate the Brandon and white we have to summon marade here the cono for Ren B and now we summon the marade that triggers the Branded loss and we just search for alz because we've already he's Tred m is gone use kit and we have a ky on the board so we can use this on the opponent's [Music] toab and then we set branded the red um so overall if you look at this endb it's pretty strong right outside of the fact that I misplayed a few times the endboard is still really good and it should be winning the game we have marij we have Furious we have Quan cesia on the board with alow branded and red we have grin on the graveyard opening protection branded lost it's really really strong should be beating anything that they throw at us [Music] so they start with themet now we can't activate cesia for the main phrase but as soon as they activate something in the main phase what we could have done is on resolution we could now use cesia to bream loock our oppon it um in order to do that though we would we would need a second Grand gunal so if we were playing two Gran Cano you can see that we're actually not in this case which is why we didn't do it but if we were playing to we could use the cier right now fuse away the AL the aler and then that summons grol which sends a reum to the gy guard can then use the Branded in red to summon sanctifier sanctifier can then summon the reum under the Branded lost window and we win the game from that however one not playing too so that option isn't available our opponent also draws droplets which is Merry good card for breaking this board um then we see reinforcement of the army and we see Rhino heart so usually against a standard tier line what you want to do is let all of the states resolve let them some kit Cass let them search with it and then banish the kit colost with marade that's that's the strongest way you can use marade um against teats so that's what we [Music] do and then on the resolution here we're going to activate the marriage a send Ren BR because even though there's no alvas in the gra yet there could easily be once we use this alvas with kesia now they decide to change droplets and it is said to just send kit colus as cost I did have send any more cards which I think is a mistake I'm not going to analyze my opponent's gains or my opponent's decisions too much because it's not relevant to branded um at least not until we get to the Branded mirror match uh but this is a mistake I think and they I think they overestimated the impact of banishing my own monster with mering so what happens here is that because they set their only monster they can choose to not negate mirade and they don't they negate my Furious Dragon here and now my mirade has to banish something and we choose to banish kit we don't Bene anything else because qu and cesia have value this has value in the graad would rather not destroy this if we don't have to and banish this um which just leaves the kits and the mirate itself as the options um so the reason why we don't banish the mirade itself is because our plan is to fuse away this Mir Jade with cesia and then ride it with quen if we banish it then we can't revive it with quen right it has to go to the gread so we don't want to give up on that plan because we already have Ren BR we already have uh an elz in the hand so like we have a way to and we have kesi on the board as well so like there's no good use for a quen aside from Reviving A Mir Jade to reuse it so that's that's how we really want to use Alin so we just decide to B the kit and now we don't do anything on resolution nothing's threatening yet we don't want to be doing anything until our opponent proves that they have something threatening and they don't Mill anything this triggers the gr gel but we choose not to use it we don't want to unnecessarily black zones and it's also there's no point summoning kitas yet because this this is not a threat the Sharon is now threatening anything except for like the battle phase so there's no reason to Su a Kus where it's easily aable we'd rather wait for later now they try to end the main F which is why we use the CES here here and we actually make sanctifier which I think is a mistake what we should have done instead is fuse the alz and the miror Jade into lellan and we should have chained retribution to add back branded Fusion so that we have a discard for the lellan then we're can trigger the Quin revive the Mirage a and lilion can then make satif fire that would have been I think the much better play because we would have shuffled away the Quan from the field the sanctifier it's going to get hit over by the Sharon anyway it's going to be forced by the battle phase anyway so we might as well make use of it now we revive the Mir Jade and we Shuffle away the quen for sanctify I think that was the best way to play this we get alaz into the graveyard and yeah cuz we have a banished albas so so with lellan we don't have to we don't have to get rid of albz from the grave yet we have marij Jade we have rendom for albz and then we get a search with branded blost so we still have a discard available for our alas but instead we went stra for sanctifier which I think is a mistake now they decide to go battle fights anyway and I let them attack her with a quan because I can always revive it with sanctify it and protecting it would have been more hassle than it's worth we don't want to waste our branded in red or our sanctifier just to get rid of a Sharon it's basically not doing anything at the moment then they activate alysus so generally what you do against sne is you want to use marij to banish POA because it denies a lot of value however because this is not a PE snake deck and it's also main phas 2 there is no threat of Getting otk By The Link monsters that are probably not even in the extra deck but even if they were it's main Phase 2 so instead we can just ignore everything except full [Music] flage so we're going to let them resolve this whole line and then we're going to summon the second miror Jade and banish the [Music] flamb so on summon we're going to flip Brandon a red again making sure by the way that every single one of our fusal spills is Ching one just so that we benefit from branded loss we're going to add a Target the Al and want to get a chain retribution this train is not necessary we didn't need this because we already have a discard available which is the second alz so we make the belly and we have to use the mirade so that we can clear it and make way for another mirade and M we and control One miror Jade so this triggers this is now the Branded loss window they C respond and we Shuffle back the band fin elbaz is important and not the one from the graveyard we disc got the alaz so that we get another albz in the graveyard for renr we keep the Branded and white in the hand we also Shuffle B the second mirade the reason why we Shuffle B the second marade is because if you look at the actual deck we don't have like a uh Drago stellia so there's not really a reason to shuel back our own Rebellion because it might seem like we have a Grind game intact like keeping the ellion but if we use both of that mades it would be hard for theion to actually recycle them anyway you would have to summon something very useless like a mud dragon this Titanic clot is going to leave the extra deck because it's going to be the send for the second marade and the only other monster that we can fuse a Banished marade with or banished marade into is mud dragon and that would be a pretty poor use of lellan on a following 10 so I decided it was much better to just re recycle the Mir now and give up on lellan so lellan stays on the board it's not in the extra deck but we have another mirror Jade still available and the sense of coming up now we're going to use the Mir Jade again it's F the Branded lost window just to make sure nothing can happen banish the flamb bdge now they reveal that they have a [Music] KCK and they put Alo belli in face down I guess the reason why they put the lellan face down is just because nothing else matches the sanctifier can't be targeted and everything else is already used as effect far is negated they discard their last card to send happy to the graveyard now here I consider using the sanctifier as a deception we can actually steal the happy and put it on our side of the field however this is a Mis A misplay because we're not actually preventing zombie vampire here there's um is there a secret line of text on zombie vampire that says any monster I use any monster from your opponent's greater can actually be used as a level eight so I actually do fall for this I activate my satif fire I try to steal the happy but I of course have to give the Emma Monster too and I realize when I'm deciding which monster to give them that it doesn't matter what I give them even if it's not level eight they can overlay into zombie vampire because of how zombie vampire works so once I realized that I decided to get them albon because it was trigger it is a level eight but it doesn't matter does not matter and now they go Ana we have forced to put the happy here we had no had no choice they're going to activate the animal now they have access to happy again once they Linker the enema off I need make Sami vampire again this is not because it's level eight they could have used it with any monster that I gave them they attach the albian so we will now trigger in the end phase we know the Branded King so that's nice because we're in main phase two we're guaranteed going to get the end phase valion they only M A again and then be summon it I wanted to play around this effect to special summon can here so I trigger the gr grol I decide that it's better to use gr grol here to fill up my boards rather than using Ren brm because Ren brm for alar is not worth it yet there not really a good Monster to summon if you look at that extra B there's no boss monsters left right there's just this miror Jade and as long as we have this miror Jade on the board we can't summon this one so I decid to just summ kidas it's a better monster saing C Theo and they go SP so he summon zero bars and because they haven't summoned the happy yet they can now summon to the Zone this will then clear the whole board we can trigger air jate and we can trigger kidus I decide to add with Kus we could have speci summoned a second Alo but or added a tragedy to a hand I decided the best option was to just search albas because we had that Mir in the exod de when bazer bar returns in my turn we can normal summon albas and out it that was my plan um if we instead searched for something like Alaba we would have to use Brandon and white to summon the marriage a and then actually use its effect to add Zer barus because it's too big it would be huge um but by adding the corus to my hand I could out it just by fusing with it and then we still have the effect available as a disruption for the next turn and then you go to the end phase and the reason I don't add anything back here we did have branded King we had cesia we had um it is just those two but the reason we didn't add those back we also had Titanic lead but there is no target for dat had we actually have been through all three copies of alas and quen and we're only playing one quen but the reason we didn't use this or the cesia is because we were out of time so I had to press no to those prompts again poly played I should not have let myself get that low on time and and we draw gold sarcophagus so this card this card can be used we still have tragedy in the de Zer bars returns and we decide to use it we're going to banish the tragedy we might as well and search for that second alibo and now the decision here is between normal summoning Al or normal summoning Albert so we have banishment left in the deck so what we could do is nor and Alaba for banishment then on our opponent's turn we can flip the banishment to revive um what could be luck we revise we could revise alz and albas confuse no we can't revive albas we can revive quen um it's not about good and in in the end I decided it it's not as good as normal sumone alas anyway um I can't remember exactly what my felt process was but I decided to know Muslim an Al and it is the better Play Because by fusing away the zero bars we preserve the merate effect we do have one alas Fusion left in our extra deck so this is our last Bish with mirud um and by having that available we basically ensure the victory because my opponent is on very little resources as long as we have this mer Advantage we should be safe from anything that they can top deck I so then use the Branded in light and we summon mud in here this is to protect against snow they still have snow in the graveyard as well as a few carts um so they can use snow a couple times here but MRA means that they can no longer put a mer face down so now no matter what the top deck snow will not out it and snow cannot attack over mud dragon either so I actually think it was a mistake by them to not play around the Branded in white they knew that this was in our hand cuz we added it back with retribution they should have B of Mo the marriage Aid with snow on summon right before we activated the banded in might but now the my dragon just checks snow forever they're on a 210 clock they join to kello it does nothing they summon it and we summon albas in the end phase because we have to do this on the opponent's turn so we're just summoning damage just in case and any point if they try to activate the snow we going to chain them more Dragon to make our dark monsters untargetable this is Happ what we do chain my dragon calling do and then the only thing to do left is to banish the [Music] snow and then the clear and attack with merid so when it comes to going second with branded it's not as simple as just following spreadsheet combos playing around hand traps and improvising your combo for certain complicated hands going second is really where Yu-Gi-Oh gets it near infinite complexity so there's really no way to formulate a comprehensive plan for how to win going second how you actually play when going second is going to depend massively on the match up and there's really no replacement here for General skill at the game that being said I can still give individual pieces of advice like tips and tricks and some general approaches you can have to different situations one important component of going second wood branded is otks to start with let's look again at the otk combo from the spreadsheet [Music] this is the simplest form of going second with branded if your opponent has a completely empty board and no hun traps you can easily go for exact leful with this line this also works with keeper as your starter since it has the same attack as Alaba and it also works with branded opening as well in a case of using opening remember that you can only speci your summon in defense so if you you want to otk using just the Branded opening you will need to add the alip to your hand instead of special summon and then you can normal summon springen kid is not able to otk like this it would be 100 damage sure however if you're playing the buau in your deck then kit can still otk as you can use the Niro's material for albon and then banish it for a bigger Titanic L the nice thing about all of these lines is that the glare around neiru by not summoning five times they're also very practical meaning if your opponent passes on nothing you're likely to actually go for this in a real game here is another specific otk combo this time using albz cesia and super poly this also works the fuge deployment instead of either the cesia or the AL that in most games though your opponent is going to have a board and you're also going to have more engine than just one single starter card making most games a lot more complicated because of this complexity most otks are going to be something that you have to just figure out in the moment there's a million ways push for lethal and branded and there's a million things your opponent can have to stop you that being said there are still some common otk patterns that are worth pointing out for example a 3,000 attack monster and two 2,500 attack monsters will attack in total for 8,000 damage exactly 3,000 attack monsters and 2,500 attack monsters are both very common and branded with the most common 3,000 attack monster being mirade and the most common 2500 attack monsters being albon gruol and bestial do also Sy fire and Furious dragon as Le DS in the tag monsters as well you can then expand on this idea by recognizing that mirade is able to banish a monster meaning that this pattern with mirade is still lethal through one blocker Furious dragon is also able to remove a monster however it requires you to give up one of your own so this otk p with furious dragon is not lethal to one Bluer unless you have another monster to destroy outside of the passin or you have an opening in the graveyard to protect a similar otk B that is also pretty common is with two 3,000 attack monsters and 2500 attack monster in this case it's possible to have mirade and Furious Dragon meaning that it's possible to have lethal for two blockers providing that you have the right setup for furious and then another similar otk pattern is with one 3,000 attack monster like miror Jade 12500 attack monster like albon and then any two of your small monsters like cesia aliber albas quen keeper or kit this will always be either exactly 8,000 damage or a little bit over the benefits of recognizing these otk patterns instead of just figuring it all out in the moment is that you can save time in your games and reduce the chances of making mistakes in your visualization if you can immediately recognize a line that gets you to one of these patterns then you don't need to spend any time double-checking that your line is actually legal since you already know for a fact that it is one other toll that can sometimes help without TK is qutis if your opponent has monsters in attack position that aren't level eight or High fusion molsters you can use qutis to make them all zero attack which for the purposes of attacking for lethal means they might as well no longer be on the field if your opponent has enough monsters you can even line up an otk PN into these zero attack monsters in which case it doesn't matter if your opponent has too many blockers or some surprise additional blockers is from the hand of graveyard is still going to be able to otk another important thing to remember when going for otk is that branded in red prevents the monster you summon from being able to attack directly also lellan cannot attack the turn it uses its effect these are important to remember as they're very easily forgotten if you're not paying attention a small thing you could do to help mitigate these downsides is to make sure that the monster you summon would branded in red ends up attacking over a monster and lilion is put into attack position always so that you can still attack with it if its effect gets negated by something like impo you can also plan to use the Bellion as the monster that you choose to destroy with furious dragon or as material for another Fusion sword that way you Wen missing out on any damage overall otk is very possible in branded however it's actually not that trivial and there's a lot of games that you can't upk at all compared to other decks branded is actually fairly bad at pushing for lethal and so it's important to recognize when it is impossible to otk something I found to be very useful in practice is to decide very early on in the turn whether or not I'm trying to push for lethal that time pushing for lethal or just breaking a board and setting up for turn three would involve very different plays so you might as well commit to One path as early as possible if you are not going for an otk then your objective going second is probably going to be to break as much of your opponent's board as possible and then set up disruptions for turn three breaking V is something that is a lot easier for Branded than otks so optimal play going second at high levels is actually more often about breaking a board and then setting up your own then it is about ocing your opponent in general breaking boards are branded is different to most other decks in the sense that you have much more realistic chances of breaking established boards with just your engine C while other decks rely heavily on hand traps and board Breakers to do most of the heavy lifting going second branded is often able to play into end boards using cars like albas branded lost miror Jade and Cera all of which have powerful board breing capabilities branded lost in particular is very threatening as it takes away a lot of your opponent's control and so most opponents are going to respect this by using removal or negation on the Branded lost which helps clear the way for your actual starters Chimera and alz are R powerful when you resolve so in practice chain bucking these effects so that they're less likely to be negated is very effective and this is not actually that difficult to achieve either a lot of your engine imbranded is also just very good into disruptions inherently as cars like albon and mirade have multiple different angles in which they apply pressure and so it's very difficult to deal with them once they hit the board I mentioned this in the going of a card section but I'll reiterate what I mean by different angles of pressure albon and mirade both have powerful effects on the field but your opponent wants to negate if they can they also have a lot of attack points meaning your opponent is also incentivized to remove them but they also both have powerful effects in the graveyard which disincentivizes your opponent from removing them or demands that they have another kind of answer for them in the end phase Mar Jade also has another angle to it which is the effect of the alas Fusion in the end phase that it sends to the Gard is cost similarly to how I talked about otk patterns you can also learn to recognize specific board breaking patterns as well one of these patterns is Fusion deployment and branded opening a chaining opening to deployment you're able to chain block albas with aliber so that conventional negates like aooa and baron can't be used on the Elbas another similar board breaking pattern is with quem and brander Fusion this line again uses is the idea of chain bucking albas there's many slaty different ways you can do this but the important part is using clam to revive albas and then chain blocking its effect when it comes to using albas as a board breaker I'll reiterates some of the things I said earlier in the going over card section it's generally not reasonable to just summon alvas on its own and expect its effect to resolve your opponents are almost always going to have a way to deal with this so you don't really want to be committing your normal summon as well as a discard just to have your albas negated or removed it's a little bit better when you use Fusion deployment to summon albas that you get to keep your normal summon for something more important but it's still just as likely to get stopped in reality resolving alvas as support to break it is going to require you to bait your aoon first or otherwise Force out their disruptions you can try the chain block it for example like we saw a minute ago or you can plan to summon albas during your end phase with something like Titanic clat with the idea of disolving it after your opponent has already used all of their disruptions some opponents will also overlook this too especially when they're unfamiliar with branded as they will underestimate the power of your end phase with Fusion deployment specifically you will have to find yourself having to make the choice between summoning albas or summoning cesia albas is a lot stronger if a board breaker in theory however as I've just mentioned it doesn't off resol especially when it's being used as one of your first plays cesia can still be the better choice to summon even though you were going second the way you make this Choice exactly is going to depend on the situation but you can consider factors like whether or not you can get access to cesia otherwise whether or not you need CES is effected lar targeted negation on your normal summon or if you plan on summoning albas in the end phase with Titanic lateral Sprint anyway you might also make the decision based on the number of discards you have in your hand since albas requires a discard whereas cesia does not the rest is a card that is very strong going second you can use this to search for grass or branded Fusion or a board breaker like talents if you're playing it drawing first will usually give your hand a lot of extra gas and it's an extender that is never really redundant as it has a lot of good targets if you already have grass and access branded Fusion you can still benefit a lot from searching for deployment branded in white or Fusion duplication Fusion duplication is not always that bad going second just because it's a trap cut as I said bred is more often about breaking balls going second and then setting up its own rather than otk the opponent this means the duplication can be an important part of setting up your disruptions for the opponent's next turn in fact if you're playing a flood gate for sanctifying your deck like reum duplication is potentially really good still going second as it can luck your opponent out of playing on turn free rendering any followup they have completely useless earli out I mentioned Guardian Chimera and how it's best used when chain block so that it's harder to negate in general chimer is better when it's destroying two cards however if you have a lot of good throwers left then it can still be better to draw too if you're rather going for Chimera as a last resort then drawing two is going to give you a better chance to find an extender than drawing one one of the big problems you'll face when going second with branded is drawing too many cards that require a disc card in M hand for example you have three cards that need a disc card so if you were to activate all of them then you'd end up using your entire hand this is a problem since it means that your opponent probably only needs to have three separate descriptions on my end board to completely stalk you you can try to play around this by using cards that require a discard as your discard for other cards so overall branded might have a good ability to play into board with this engine however just like any other deck the simplest tool to help go second is your non-engine cuts that is exactly why they're in your deck so it makes perfect sense that they will be the most important part of your game plan for going second using hand chops and board Breakers in general is fairly straightforward and how you use them is not often relevant to branded specifically however there are sometimes where your non-engine decisions are impacted by the engine cards that you draw in this hand for example we have a lot of cards that require a disc code as well as an ash Blossom if we use ash as a hand ramp on our opponent's turn there's going to be a noticeable lack of cut in our hand to use as discards in this situation it's reasonable to consider not using the ash as a hand trap and instead just using it as discard for it if the opponent starts playing and they seem to have the mean of playing for ash then it's probably better to just hold it as a discard and to only consider using the ash if there was an opportunity for it to be extremely impactful and this also applies to your other hand shs as well like imperm and also best the last thing I want to mention about going second with branded is that not every game is winnable in fact quite a lot of them are not some players have this misconception that branded can always win every game you just have to to be skilled enough this isn't true especially when you're going second sometimes your opponent's combell is so strong that you have no chance of beating it with your engine cards meaning that you have to draw a non-engine card and resolve it in order to win since Brandon doesn't always play that many non-engine cards it is realistic to not draw any and that lose to your opponent's full combo it's already possible that your opponent's end board will just have more disruptions than you have cards in hand if every single one of your starters gets negated then there is just nothing you can do skill has nothing to do with it the only chance you have in games like this is to stop your opponent with hand chaps or the perfect board breaker recognizing these games unknown that they are unwinable is important as it will let you focus more on the games that are winnable similarly sometimes you could even have a hand trap but your opponent is able to extend right through it these situations are even worse since you're down a card now and as I mentioned a minute ago it is important to have dis cards available if you want to break a board anyway that's it for going second with branded so let's now move on to some actual games against various different matchups so the nice thing about playing against tempai is that if they win the coin flip and choose to go second you can be reasonably certain that Europe Poland is playing tempik which means you can adapt your turn one appropriately if you ever get to decide to go second against tempai you should definitely do it Brandon is not one of the Decks that is super comfortable going first against tempai as the hand traps can be very effective at stopping you and it's pretty strong at going second into the weak board that tempai creates as well the first thing you want to make sure that you do when playing against tempai is to sumon your monsters in defense position so that they can't be destroyed by a lightning storm even if you have opening in your graveyard to protect them from destruction your opponent is not going to fall for this and you should still summon them in defense anyway so that you can save the opening for a later destruction effect like Transcendent or black Ros the easiest way to beat tempai is to rec L when during the standby phase by doing this in the standby phase you're playing again around Ling storm as well as other board breakers like Waki feather duster and talents because tempai always plays droplets you want to try and play around it here by summoning the requin during a branded L window and you will usually achieve this by flipping branded in red or Fusion duplication another way of beating tempai is by fusing away all of their monsters into alol lenus with albz ideally you'd want to wait until the battle phase to do this so that you don't have to deal with sangin summoning making their monsters unaffected however it's pretty common for tempai to try of a Transcendent Dron before entering the battle phase so you will most likely have to do this in the main Trace instead in order for this to work in the main phase you will need to deal with sangen summoning if they have it and you can do this by either destroying it with furious Chimera or by negating it with Luna will which you can summon with Gro one way of combating the board Breakers that tempai has is by summoning light and darkness Dragon Lord with banishment in their standby face this allows you to negate up to three of their board Breakers and it can even negate their starters as well branded King is technically a way of beating board Breakers although it's usually not the ideal way to do it since it also negates your own board if you do get to use your in board against the tempai starters the best master to banish with mirade is usually the chundra but you can also sometimes banish that noal sumon whatever it is so that they can't activate Chandra in their hand something you still need to be careful of is sing summoning it can often help a lot to have an end board that has a way of outing s and summoning otherwise you could just be cooked right away if they have a starter even if they don't have a board breaker and here is an example game against tempai okay so we now have a game versus temp play our opponent selected going second so we know that we're playing against against tempai even if the name is AAL Brando we know it's not branded it's 40 cards and it's selected going s so it's tempai um our hand is kind of bad we don't have anywhere to play except for the Nadia 7 so that's what we have to do we have to start with Nadia because we have the max maxus already we can search for quen instead and we still send Gaba so that we can summon the Maximus and we want to see another draw and we Jo to Ala we then go for the normal summon quam the reason we have to go quam instead of ala is because we are already locked we're already locked out of the extra deck so aler for Branded Fusion or High Spirits into the siren line that's not going to work we caught someone from the extra deck so instead it's just important to get the Quin on to the board for the opponent's done right you want as much as possible for the opponent's done which is why we start with [Music] Quan and then we get inut but this is fine because we have Maximus so we can still extend from here and we're also playing Lulu one because it's only good against tempai repairing it with the elbow Andis um so we can still do pretty good plays where at the Maximus here I get to send the Lulu and the Titanic Titanic fled he's not going to summon Quan because we already have it but it can still search for alas which is important um because lilu is going to get us to cut easier so we set the thrust and it go the end phase our opponent sends Promethean princess and which reveals their on tempai because no real fire deck would actually send their Princess to the Grave yet it can't be used in the graveyard um but we know it's tempai right we already know it's tempai so this even more conerns that it's tempai um the reason we said the th is because because we know it's tempai we know that there's a chance they have lightning storm and what we want to do is just attract the lightning storm to the back room rather than getting rid of our Tech position Quin I think get it's worth it you don't normally set Bluffs in branded because you want all the discard you can get normally um also of followup is important in branded so normally you don't do this but in this exact situation it was worth it because we have enough discards and we don't want our opponent using lightning storm on Alin um in the end phase Lulu summons cesia and we get to search for alar we can fuse the alar using cesia on ARS to um one cool setup that we have is reum because we hard draw it we can actually fuse into something like lellan specifically using the requium then the lellan make sanctifier which can then revive the requin right so we have that line available um it does lose pretty hard to impo or drop stuff I st with this so we got punished for setting the thrust but it doesn't really matter I still think it was the right play and then here we reactivate a goia when we see the zangan summoning I think this is UN unnecessarily playing into gamma we should probably have waited for them to summon a monster first um but anyway we go for the lellan there is no droplets although they could still be a droplets now shffle buyulu and lit so that we have it available for later if we need it um all I want to do is make sure there's one zone available and now we can re loock they don't have droplets so they can't chain to this and then all can search for Branded Fusion the vum goes in defense position so that they can't crash it um but there's no attack position MERS anyway they crash chundra but it doesn't mean much we're just going to win the game here from here the game is really simple we just activate branded fusion and ensure that we have lethal [Music] when you're playing against ubell just like with tempai the battle position of your monsters can be important against you Bell you want to put your monsters with lower attack and defense in attack position and your monsters with lower defense than attack in defense position this is so that your opponent reflects less damage with b m pain when the UBS attack into your monsters this can make a big difference as it can affect how many ubel mostes your opponent needs to summon in order to crash for lethal the base steel lellan for example has 3,000 defense which means it only takes three ubel monsters to attack into a defense position lellan to deal legal damage however the Bellion having only 2500 attack means that it reply as or ell monsters to attack into lethal into an a tank position leilan when you're using a end board to disrupt ell if they start with dark beckoning Beast or opening of the SP Gates you should probably use mirade to banish their dark beckoning Beast before they can L it off or use it second normal sumon dispose the opponent in an awkward position where they've already used that normal summon and they can't use the SP gaze to revive anything since there's nothing in that graveyard yet they pretty much need exactly nightmare Throne to extend from this position and if they do stop by normal summoning Lotus you can again just banish it as it puts them in pretty much the exact same position when you're going second against your bell something you should always try to think about on playing into their board is whether or not to summon your monsters in attack position if you're not able to break the board you're going to be forced to attack into the Q Bells which makes it much easier for them to kill you on the next turn in fact it might even kill you on your own turn if you're not careful for the most most part you Bel condo boards are going to be enough to deal with the majority of your hands especially once Master do gets fiend Smith and verious the only chance you have to break a board like this is actually dark roller or maybe albas plus super pulling here's an example game against you Bell okay so now we have a game against you Bell you can see that I'm going first I won the coin flip so I have no idea if my opponent is playing tempai or not um and I have K plus duplication which is not the strongest combo but if it all resolves then this hand is actually pretty good because we're going to have a one card combo plus duplication and we also have these on the end board as well so something about the kit one card combo is that you do have to give up on two cards in hand which will probably be the thrust no matter what and then either the super poly or the Branded in red the reason why you want to give up the thrust is because the only good Target in this deck is duplication and we already have it so we're going to go to the main phase there's nothing to do in the draw phase we normal summon and it resolves you choose to put back the kit there was no response and even if there was a response like I said we already have the duplication so we don't need it this from here it's just a one card combo we have to go for Bellion there is no access to a renr line because we don't have any other material or any other way to get to albas in the graveyard sometimes you can make Ren brm with kit in this position but you have to have specific setup in the hand and grav it so we're going to make marade which is part of the one card line something you'll see here is that I put the rebellion in attack position this is something you can do against yel however I should have also put the marade in defense position as well what you want to do is either choose between playing around lightning Stone in which case everything goes in defense position or you can play around your bell cards by putting everything with its smallest stat facing forward right so that a ion you take less damage when they attack into it but with the marij J this is in its biggest stat right so they should have this should be in the fence position if I want to play around ubell but I did not know that my opponent was playing ell and then we set the cards and go to the end phase we go to the end phase even though we're going to activate the mired because we want to just play around end of main phas things like um Karen for example um we activate the marade the reason we activate the marade here is because in order for duplication to be a lock with requium we need to have access to a light spellcaster so this is why we're choosing to go for the extended line here so banish a l Bellion it didn't end up mattering what stat it was in what position it was in because we vanished it um we send cesia this is what you do in the line so that you can search for High [Music] Spirits now we can use the High Spirits we had to toggle on in order to do this and we add elar because it's going to be material for cesia this is something we've seen a lot in the one card combo section um and now we got for duplication in the standby phase the reason why we're doing this so get in the Branded Fusion is because we're trying to w we luck right now we don't want to mess around we don't want to get lightning stormed we don't want them to special summon like a diell star as first action we're just going to lock them right away we also want to get the search for mcua as early as possible as well so here we get hit with cold by the grave which means we can no longer use our recream Lu the reason why the opponent has to use it now is because there's going to be a branded lost window if they let this L Bellion resolve the reason why this is not a branded loss window right now is because duplication remember does not create a branded loss window it doesn't count as I spell a trap that Fusion summons right it technically is just copying so this one doesn't create a branded loss window which is why they're able to use the cold by but this is their last chance to get rid of the re otherwise we would have summoned sanctifier and then used sanctify effect during the Branded last window instead we now choose to make lellan sorry with lellan we choose to make Furious Dragon there's no point going for San to fire it wouldn't be as good because we're not locking anymore right so we choose to go for furious dragon and we put it in defense position to play around things like talents this is incidentally playing around your bell cards but it is more so just a role of thumb in general anything you summon on the opponent's turn should go in defense position um and the reason we shoveled back alaz and Titanic clad is because we just want to recycle our resources so our opponent starts with one for one revealing that they are playing ell now on summon here what you want to do usually when your opponent normal summons of lotus or special summons of lotus is just get rid of it either with miror Jade or in this case we're going to use Furious this miror Jade is dead um so this is why we're using Furious if this marade was live it's better to banish because you want the level you want the z00 fiends like Lotus to be banished rather than in the graveyard that way they're not material for phantom um the reason why we really want to use another reason why we want to use the Furious so early is that we wanted to get our miror off the board so that we can revive it with quen because this one is currently no life so we pop our mirade and our opponent shows us that they have a really good hand of extenders they now have nightmare flown so that's going to get them to the dark Reckoning Beast this is pretty strong our Furious was pretty wasted because they can still revive the Lotus right it wasn't banished we have to destroy it so now they can use the spell and at this point they're going to make Phantom this is a sumone from the extra deck so we can use quen and we're going to try to revive our Mar they try to negate and we have to negate this because it is really important that we get back to this miror Jade mirade goes in defense position and the reason we don't banish immediately on summon and we let them use their additional normal summon is because what they can do is revive Lotus anyway right they could always revive Lotus we didn't know about this Lotus but they could have easily discarded a card I'm ding revive this Lotus so we didn't want to let that happen so they're going to go for Spirit of Yubel now here one problem that we're facing is that our monster zones are full and we don't have a discard in hand for super pulling we do have Gora in our extra deck um and this is a really good card to have because everything ubel has is a is a dark fiend however we don't have room right we don't have a disc card and we need to clear our main Master Zounds in order to do something like revive albas with Ren BR so one thing we do here is actually trigger the grandr and then chain cesia and the objective here is to try and free up a zone They summoning kitus in the extra monster Zone and then a second quem from the deck which is going to get us a discard F in our hand so that sends branded saw which we're going to use right away so that our super poly is [Music] live here they discard the nightmare pain now what I should have done is recognize that this is attempting to now use this second effect or third effect they want to now add the continuous back to their hand they want to add the nightmare pain back what I should have done here is either use the mirade to try and banish Spirit or use the super poly to get rid of the spirit that way they would have been denied access to the nightmare pain but I didn't do that I missed this so they now get the pain back now they make Al marage they're threatening to make SP now which isn't the worst card in the world but it is pretty threatening and and SP never means that you are surviving the T when Yubel is summoning it right because like is still crash into you and deal Leal damage so I decide to play around that B I get rid of their monsters now and here it looks pretty good except for the fact that they still have nightmare pain they still haven't been through their grave squir yet and they can still summon their Phantom from the graveyard so they now summon out the second Phantom this gets in the grace G and triggers the nightmare from which is going to get a lot of Link material at this point that is all that's happening they're getting link material and what we are trying to stop is them having three U bells on the field and hitting into us for Leal that's what we're trying to avoid here when they summon the spirit we try to banish it with marade and we get punished by this oneup Shara that they had in the hand this allows them to actually trigger the the spirit so this is pretty bad for us however there is no guaranteed way to get to um four you Bells they would need four you Bells here to do Leal damage right this is the difference between having 2500 defense and 3,000 attack if they could summon three ubels it would not be lethal but four ubels would be lethal whereas if this was an attack position or this they would only need three so they have SP now anyway and something we need to respect is the end phase effects of Terra in Connie right the Terra in con that this ubel Simmons that would be a way to clear our home forward they banish our rone we still can't chain because our most zones a full I think again this might have been misplayed I think I was really caught off God by the cold by the gra I didn't really know how to handle it and also powerful ubell hands are hard to deal with in general but yeah I think there could have been maybe a play we could have made by Reviving albas The only problem is we didn't nearly have enough discards we definitely we're not going to get another one um so I don't know how we would have resolved both super poly and Alat um but now we go for the grace fora and the attempted to end the main phase which is why we use kidas it just means that SP can't destroy our cesia or our Quinn the elf lets them get back the SP which is really strong and now in the end phase they're going to get you Bell to be destroyed oh no they chose to Tribute actually I was thinking they might summon Terra and con to destroy the whole board but they actually ended up tributing and then we get branded and Heist birds back in the end phase now here I was pretty low on time I didn't have a lot of time for this time this is honestly not the easiest situation to deal with right when your opponent has a ubel and then the nightmare pain and the throne attacking for lethal into this Bo board is actually kind of difficult right if you just banish ubel with mirade the nightmare phone will trigger and they'll summon another ubel so you have to find a way to essentially deal with that right um what I should have tried to do is try to access Guardian Chimera to pop the nightmare pain and the nightmare throne but without a lot of time I end up making some mistakes here I try to pop just the nightmare pain [Music] I summon Alasia we can't activate the effect because we've already used our Rebellion here they negate our cesia this works even on the Branded last because this is not really negating it's just changing the effect now they get to summon the Terry and Connie and we cycle one of the Phantom which is important because they've been through both of their Phantoms so now they have access to another one next time we go battle phase hit up SP and we just have to pass 10 our miror Jade is going to be live our Furious is live our albz and cesia can make another albon so we have a decent amount of disruption here the only problem is it is pretty scary when you're facing youell so map is a really good draw for them because there's less than get back to another Spirit Gates which is a lot of resources and I actually felt that I might lose this game at this point I decid to pop this so that it would be it wouldn't search so I chain here to someone sanctifier I think this is the mistake is sanctify doesn't do much all I wanted to do was trigger the quen so that I could get back to mcua I wanted this mccu on the field so that it can be in the gate and I use the miror Jade here I just want to get rid of the ubels um I go for this because why do I go for this yeah because if I if I banish the ter and con then the nightm would just replace it what I should have done if I wanted to banish the teret incate and I think the better way to play this overall would have been to just pop the spirit Gates let that resolve and then on the next chain use cesia is chaining one and Mir is chaning two to banish the turret incarnate then cesia would res soul to summon sanctifier then we would get the Branded lost or get the quen but they don't get to Tri of Throne because it's the Branded last window that would have been the better way to play it but again I was low on time I was struggling to out this board they go for the second Phantom and then in the end phase they they get to destroy we tried to negate but of course they have this thinking about it actually maybe this was a mistake maybe we should have just let this resolve because it would have destroyed their Phantom but it would have checked the nightmare Throne anyway so it was basically the the same thing we summon aliba instead of alibas because again our Loop Bellion has been used so we CAU fuge of these ell Masters and we get Brandon and white this is our real only follow up to get to our second mirror Jade or our guardian kimer and we get to search from Maximus here and add that CIA so we have a lot of resources all we have to do is clear the ell monsters and beat the spirit that a b no is in the hand so the way we can beat this spirit is actually I don't think we did know about this yes we did know about the spirit yeah we know about the spirit we just have to play around this the way we can play around this is to negate it with mcua so one idea that I came up with was to revive it to the field with quen and then we can neate the spirit so we need to First remove these you B monsters and that's going to be with Brandon and white going to make Kera and I decid to draw first because there is nothing in my deck that can really matter so I just want to draw cards and then search I guess it made sense to actually draw first now that I think about it a search First um so now they trigger they trigger to someon the teret and Connie we know have to get rid of this but we can do that with miror Jade if we're able to get to it so what we can do is fuse away into mirade we can banish this we can attack fil but we do have to deal with the spirit and the way that I should have done this I misplay here I have my normal summon available what I should do is activate the de servant get the quend back from my graveyard then no one will summon it it do a matter what we send the important part is that we then use the marade banish the turret and Connie and then that triggers the Quin because the card left the extra deck to revise an aura which then negates the spirit I missplay I activate the mirade first now we don't actually have this option available I send Dron because it's never going to matter and we know so here we don't really have a lot of options the best option we really have is to use the retribution and then add back maybe the the Branded in red there's not really anything to me the is the last cut in an extra de it didn't end up mattering because I used the Shroud to draw and we just drw into Kai and because they have a spirit in the graveyard we can now just negated it but what I should have done was the mcua line where we use a servant before activating mared that would have guaranteed the wind even if we didn't draw cold by but we draw it so now we just attack the lethal even though we [Music] misplayed against fire king snake eye or any version of snake eye for that matter if your opponent starts with snake eye Ash it's a good idea to use your mirud banish on the popla you might think it is better to banish snake eye Ash since Ash a second effect is how they access fland however it's possible for your opponent to still access flurge Anyway by summoning Oak with the OSS so it ends up being better to take away the pop value instead from this position if your opponent has no extenders the only line they have available to them is to use OSS on the ash to summon o which then summons back the popla from vanished at this point if you have any other the destruction at all all you have to do to cut them off of accessing flamberge is to get rid of the oak when you're going second against snake ey X it can be very hard to break their board when they do their full combo especially when it's backed up by one or two hand traps some of your best attempts at beating a snake ey board are using super poly plus albas to summon mirade or just super Poly on its own to summon MK dragon with the fire monsters against Fire King Snake Eye specifically removing all of their fire monsters from the board can be game-winning as it turns off their princess and potentially their curine in hand too which will in turn disable their entire Fire King Engine allowing you to combo pretty freely abah hamud has a video about combating snake ey with branded on his channel so I definitely recommend you look at that he is a very very good branded playit here is an example game against VI King snaker Okay so so here we have a game against Viking snake and we go first we have a pretty bad hand it doesn't play but we do have a draw and we do have nid so we don't get we don't get to combo with the fusions but we do get we do get in the deer at least we start with the draw one and we send alvaz because it works with more top dech and we're joined to thrust so we still don't have a play we have to go for media servant combo um for some reason I decided to send uh Al on here um I think my thought Pur was that because he have albas in the briet already I want to make sure that my one Maximus getting hand trapped doesn't end the end of the game right because if my Maximus Got Hand trapped we would have to use the book of eclipse um which yeah we don't want to do we don't want to use this book of eclipse if we don't have to I thought it was a lot safer to just use quen because even if quen gets stopped we can then use albon in the end phase I don't think it was necessarily correct but that's what we decided to do we get veiled and then this is just a cold byy the sty is pretty good for us because the rest is still lies even though we called by the ve so cor to send cesia cesia is going to have be added back in the end phase and then we can use albon to actually use use High Spirits if we want to because we already have albas um we set duplication we don't have access to branded fion but we can technically get to it by resolving CIA on the opponent's turn into GR gell into s s right and then send branded Fusion then duplication that's um that's our method of getting to a requium look um but where's have a lot of other options for how to disrupt the opponent so this is not one of those situations where you would be expecting to reum loock necessarily and then here we get to revive the cesia so this end board here has a cesia it has a material diffuse once we put the albas in the graveyard CL can revive it we have gr grol which can summon a corus we're not playing B one it right now and but we are playing corus and I think we're also playing a second Quin for GR Corell as well although we might not be um if we get impromed in the draw phase though this loses a lot of his power One play that we still have is to actually activate the CIA anyway and the chain book of the clipse that way to cesia would still resolve and we would you would be able to summon in albon or sanctifier or something like that probably albon our opponent does the snake ey Ash though we do have a super pulley Target for this so I did than you we activate the the grand grol um I want use the summon quizes and then on the resolution here what we could do is use super ply to summon Gora um this might actually be one of the the reasons why we chose not to use um Maximus because I think we were we were relying on super poly into Gora here right I think um I think that was maybe my reasoning for why we wanted to keep Gora in the extra deck um and we want to use it here right we want to strongly consider using a hand because what our opponents can do is play around super poly um it's very common for good opponents to do this when they have the sneak ey line here they play around super poly right by getting to uh nightmare Phoenix as quick as they can or SP little knight uh we decide to use the Quan because cor is left to the extra deck so we're going to summon the albas this is pretty good because it's going to let us use material for cesia while still discarding this elbow of the hand so we're going to not let them play around super po we're going to get rid of those cards now now what we can do is at some point activate the cesia then chain book of eclipse and then we can still fuse the albas on the board into albon if you wanted to or we can make Mir directly using the Gora which is pretty good we can also use duplication toting super poly again now that it's in the graveyard and that can also make marade at this alas so it was pretty important that we have this my opponent goes LS into Oak this gets them back into the snake High cards activating Oak here doesn't really go anywhere because they can get to flamb Burge and they can push but they can't link off the flamberge without any of extender um what they do is the try to end the main phase and I make the mistake of letting them go battle phase I think I was happy to let them um let them guarantee that they wouldn't uh kill me right I I was happy to let them go battle phase because I got a guarantee that I Wouldn't Die however I played really hard into garunix I did recognize that garunix was a possibility this is something this magic can do so if they ever have a small Fire Monster they can crash into yours and then trigger the runix and uh damage them this is really strong especially if there's a fire King in the graveyard because the Kim was all Kieran the unsummon effective garona ex into Kieran into spash a summon something like gvat um they could do that all in the damage up right so you can't respond with a lot of cards um and we should have played around this what we should have done is activate the book of eclipse in the end at the main phase we should have used the cesia chain Eclipse then we should have made miror Jade with these two and then these would have been faced down the snake head should have been faced down we have a face of miror Jade that if they somehow in the remaining fre cards have a way to extend they still have to push through the mirror I think that was the better Play We you to still have duplication above above of that so yeah I think we we messed up a linen go battle phase another good option was to just simply activate cortis at the end of the main trees right the Snake Eyes would have gone to zero attack and so would have quen so when they crash they actually wouldn't have died which would not have triggered garunix so that was another good play we could have made um but I made the mistake here of guaranteeing my safety by letting go battle phase and then we use the duplication it's too late to use cesia in the battle phase so we make marade and I decide to use the marade to banish one of them and draw into a kit I send R because even though I don't really want to discard the kit we are going to get cesia in the end phase likely so we want to set up the possibility of using albas to fuse in the on phase I decid to banish the a the sink Ash and they decide to crash the oak anyway so that they could tryer Gonic this then pops orenic they don't have any other the fire monster which is usually what you expect if there's no fire monster in the gay Gad then they're going to go all Ken and that's going to get them into a rade and they decide to attack her with a quen and I use the ren Brun Panic is still in my extra deck so I can still fuse with that runix here and that's what I tried to do but our opponent Changs ghosta and I is destroyed at the end of the battle phase I strongly considered using book of eclipse because as soon as the main phase is entered they have priority to activate or to summon from the extra deck right and I didn't want my opponent to summon um the fire kexes because that would destroy the the board however after some thinking I decided it was better to just let them do it because this doesn't go as well right the Fire King X would not go as far as it looks quietus would trigger mirade would trigger cesia will come back I would have infinite followup um so they decide to go vampire instead and then this is ignition effect there's no reason to that it was Sol we just flip it face down I get to draw one but it doesn't matter we have easily enough followup at this point and they even draw ash which is really funny because we draw branded Fusion so they actually stop my branded Fusion ltk it's actually hard to otk here what we needed is a second Grand greno in the extra deck but we only played one in this list so we just have to attack over the zombie vampire damage is 7,000 so there was no reason to try and banish we pushed for an extra 3,000 it's not least so we might as well preserve Alan mirade the only other option was to consider activating marade to send another albian just so that you can set branded in red um the reason why I I didn't want to do that is because I was pretty sure that this was not inom uh the reason I thought it was not inom is because my opponent did not imper me on turn one right we know that they inomed me in the drill phase which makes me think that they top decked inom so for this to be empero they would have had to it would have had to have it in that opening hand right which makes she think that they would have changed when we normal summon to the quem the start at the game right you think that they would have when we called by deila they probably would have chained imp pom right if they had it so I was pretty s that this was cold by and not imp pom which is why I didn't want to waste the marade I would rather have I'd rather have the marade overbranded in red um we know that they have some plays because they have OS in the graveyard so I wanted to preserve my desertion it was important they draw a fire monster which is really really good we actually Gamble and then not having a fire monster so they get to go ponic and now when they activate Island we decide to chain mirade because if this card in hand isn't a fire moner they instantly lose the King right so we decide to banish but the card in hand was a fire monster so they not get decept Kieran this triggers garunix we know have no deception but our board is still tricky to deal with they decide to end the main phase which is why we use goias they go battle phas anyway these two don't crash because zero monsters don't kill kill each other then they go into the fire K Seas this is still pretty bad you know it triggers the marade it triggers the ktis um which is why they choose not to actually activate the unsummon effect so they just go State for the ignition effect they try to pop their Island then let them pop the the heang and that revives orenic but at this point they time out they were too slow and we get the win against barrier statue stun decks it can often be hard to do anything against a barrier statue backs up with some background most of the time these decks will be playing summon the gates like judgment and warning so even if you do have a normal summon that is bigger than the barrier statue it's still pretty easy for them to protect it one thing you can try to do to play around this better is to set your monsters instead of summoning them just in case your opponent attacks into them and flips them face up keep in mind that judgment and warning can still neate flip summons however it's still better to go for this plan over normal summoning them since your opponent might attack into him flipping them face up and even if they don't attack you can at least prevent your opponent from applying pressure by attacking directly over and over again with the barrier statue if you manage to get sanctifier on the field against these decks it is pretty much unable since they often only play removal that targets a punishment and correct them some of these decks also play Super poly which sanctify also beats since it can never be used as fusion material here's an example game against the barrier statue stun deck okay so here is an example match against a stun deck you see my opponent is going first we didn't draw any non-engine cards but once our opponent activates Morganite and necro Valley we know exactly what we're playing against we don't need a n non engine um and our opponent almost some's commandant which is good we don't want to see a barrier statue so when they set to backrow we're pretty happy about this the only flu gate there is deal with is the necro valy this deck is a lot harder to beat when they have a barrier statue here instead of this um when that's the case you pretty much have to win with inam or choplets or VAP normal summons right or normal sets that's like your game onean and but because they don't have that it's a lot easier for us so we're going to draw a time and we get straight to the main phase there's no reason to play around like jel or vea because there's nothing in hand and even if there was you wouldn't play around those in this match up because this deck doesn't play End traps like that even imp pom is likely to not be here so right now I'm not expecting either of these back row to be in P um typically you would expect the back row in this matchup to be these Gods punishment and Crackdown and also like Iron Thunder all in judgment maybe like a macrocosmos right something like that maybe another flood gate like skill drain maybe um but those the those are the cards that you expect there's also super poly as well which this deck sometimes plays although I would be skeptical about super poly because they did not keep a c in hand I think you would probably not summon this if you had a super buly so my my expectation right now is to just play around judgment and Punishment things like that so our hand you can see that we have quite a lot of extenders here so you might think that pushing for lethal is really straightforward but it's actually not because necro valy is a pretty good flp gate against Brandon it does stop quite a lot it stops alvon from being able to the banish from the graveyard it stops Le Bellion as well right Le Bellion can Shuffle from the banish Zone but if you try to shuffle OST from the grade yet it won't let you you can't do that under necro valy you also can't add anything back with attribution or kid or tragedy you can't summon a Bisal so there's actually quite a lot that you can't do so I pretty much realize that there's no way to push for Lil and instead I decide that we should get just go for anti- stun tools right so that's going to be chera to pot Cuts Furious to pot cuts and sanctify sanctify is really good because it can't be tected so in the interest of doing that we're going to start with the lellan this is just to turn our lellan into sarin and this is a better card it's a dark dragon um it also triggers if we use it as material so even though we can't summon it it's still better to use the rebellion and we s with keeper with discard the thrust because this is never going to be live in the match up they never going to activate a monster effect um and now instead of going straight for Branded fion we want to play around judgment judgment is usually not great against branded Fusion because you have a lot of ways to add it back right we can use Saria or shrouded to send retribution and then retribution can add back the Branded F because judgment negates the activation you can you can try again and you can use branded Fusion again same for tragedy you can reset with tragedy or add a back with kit um so for that reason judgment is usually pretty bad against brand of fusion however because our opponent has specifically necro Valley this shuts down every way of recycling branded Fusion so if we were to activate this and we got hit with judgment we would not be able to use this again right not until we got rid of the necro Val so what I do instead is go for opening trying to get to branded Lost first and we chain what this is why a sarer is important I want to chain look the Ala because we don't care about this effect but we do care about this effect and we want to avoid solemn strike or Iron Thunder something like that Iron Thunder is also the reason why you summon your cards in the same Zone as their zones right because the iron thund one it negates and destroys will also destroy that whole column right of the car that it negates so that's why we summon in the zone here and summon in the zone here um so we chain block and we get to branded L we send retribution even though we can't use it because there's just nothing better to send we can't use opening we already have it anyway um we can't use any effects like High Spirits none of these work under necro Valley so we might as well just send something for later in case the game goes in an unexpected way and then we get branded lost branded lost is going to make it so that that branded Fusion can be hit with judgment and this would probably prompt a solemn judgment and if it doesn't you can be reasonably sure that they don't have it um Mone even if they don't have it branded loss is pretty good you can see we go for the Branded Fusion now there is no Solen judgment and we summon Alon wasend cut easier just to get into rotation although admittedly this doesn't really matter um because we're in a branded lost now it's going to be pretty hardten to use any other backrow like Crackdown or punishment so we can try and get rid of one of these under the Branded lost window they can't use iron bunder either so we're going to try and get rid of the necro valy under the Branded lost window and the way we do that is by making Furious dragon so it has to be Ching one albon otherwise we don't get a granted lost window and then here I make a mistake I think I decid to banish both of my mons from the field to make Furious Dragon the reason we can't banished from the graveyard is because of necro Valley um but I think I should have banished the alibas that I searched instead of that Al I think having albian on the board already established is pretty good against stun this would have made it very easy all we would have to do is keep attacking with it and if it ever died it gets to set Brenda King in the end phase which is really really good it PS very well with our Furious um I had a specific line in mind which is why I did this but I think it was mistake I think we should have played it a little bit slower and just summoned albon and left it on the field but under the Branded last window we decid to PO the necro valy so now we are free from the flucky we now go for gold the plan now is we're going to summon sanctifier with Brandon in white and then we're going to make Chimera with Brandon and red so that's going to get to all three of our anty stun TOS right it's going to be sanctifier it's going to be furious I'm also going to pop with a chimera [Music] so we get shrouded send brenon why um drawing Lu Bellion is pretty good here but um but the reason we searched albas is because we know that we were going to have a dragon monster so what we want to have is albas in the hand so that we can use Brandon and white the plan was to use [Music] uh sorry no that's not true we're going to use the elbass from the gradior actually because we're no longer on necro valy so we're going to get to summon sanctifier like this and now we just get Summon kit this gets to branded in red but for some reason I had B the Branded in the Branded in white this was just a Mis click I think I I don't know what I was thinking um but if we added the Branded in red and then put back the a bell we would have gone for Chimera to pop one of the back row which still hasn't been used which leads me to believe it's not anything like an Iron Thunder because it probably would have negated kit or maybe yeah about probably K they didn't have a chance to negate anything else so it could have still been Iron Thunder up until that point but not not anymore so now we pretty much have a read that it's it's maybe a dead super poly or it's specifically these kinds and then they revealed punishment which we did expect they s Milan here which is going to be pretty good against to out the Furious but he just put it back into our deck so we can still summon it again if we want to we just got to the end phase and we don't get anything because we didn't send any fusion monsters to the great our opponent draws two and they do draw Desir which is a pretty good draw um the sanctifier is hard to deal with so we're still feeling pretty comfortable here we can easily summon a kit from my graveyard and or alibo to get you branded in red and that would be pretty pretty good no matter what we do the San fire is pretty safe and hard for them to deal with because of the fact that it can't be targeted or used as fusion material our bonus draws for designes are pretty bad though so this game gets pretty easy now we just summon back hit we do it in the end phase because we have to use albon the sanctify a dragon on our opponent them we get back Kint we put back alz we'll get back branded fusion and from here it's pretty basic all we're going to do is try to timer our opponent and summon back out the Furious [Music] again the Channing one is important here so that we can summon Furious under the Branded L window we search for a dark dragon here the advantage with albon because we don't have any in that grave yet now under the Branded L window we get to top one of the new sets we po the new one because the old one didn't do anything last time so we can pretty sure that it's not threatening we did basically the same plays last time so we're pretty sure that this doesn't do anything and then we go for Rebellion now we just activate I'm we going to get to clear the last two back this is again under the Branded lost window we sacrificed pushing for lethal but I think it's worth it because this time we actually have ALB on so we're going to get to set um the Branded King which is another really good toll against stun that outs any Floodgate um and we still have the sanctifier so at this point the game is pretty much unusable we send another branded opening just in case our opponent has like double RI or something and then we set the Branded King and now all we have to do probably should have done in the standby phase but we should have revived the Furious dragon with sanctify and then we have a pop for the backrow in the end phase there's only one unknown now so all we have to do is destroy it and the game from here is straightforward against specifically runix stun branded actually has an easier time than it usually does against bar statues then the reason for this is that runix stun tends not to play various statues except for the light one which bred can actually play Under satify is just as good against runy decks as it is against other stun decks since it can't be tacked by the Run expells also by playing 60 cards you make it harder for runic to deck you out and also harder for them to banish important search targets off of the top of your deck braded King is really important against brunic stun in my opinion this C single-handedly turns runic stun from a bad matchup into a good matchup you can use this card at any time to negate every Floodgate your opponent has as well as their ronic crown allowing you to easily P for leads all that time branded King is also reusable and it's also likely to be the only card in your deck that can deal with grave of the super ancient alism once it has the solved against guess any rudic deck one of the classic plays you can make is to destroy runic fountain with furious Dragon during a branded loss window so that your opponent can use hugan to protect it this can be a very powerful play if your opponent doesn't see coming as it can sometimes clear the way for you to otk your opponent completely uninterrupted and here is an example game against reic stun okay so this is a game against ronic stun with lost the coin blp you can see their opponent is going first and they only have ronic cards um but we don't know that yet we see that they just start with a flashing fire and what we see evenly matched um it's pretty telling that this is likely to be a stun deck but it's not guaranteed um and then what happens is our opponent because they just have a bunch of runics um they basically play Pure runic they banish or a banishment from our deck so we have to remember that we don't have this and a need draw too and then they noral summ in the Statue so now we know that it's runx stun um and they don't set any back R they just leave cards in the hand which implies that they are either barrier statues like more duplicate barri statues or they just runic cuts and I think I think it's more likely that they're runic Cuts because this de usually only plays the light statue so the chances of them being more copies of that are pretty pretty rare and even if it was a very statue or two though it still have to be another card which is likely to be a runic um so does no floodgates basically is what we're having to deal with except for the Statue so right now that's what I'm thinking of the we have a light Berry statue plus a bunch of runic and that's what we're facing um in general light statue was pretty good against branded because or it's pretty good for Branded because you can still summon Lights Under the light statue right and most importantly that's going to be sanctifier this card beats runic really well because it can't be targeted right all of the runics like freezing curses and the flashing fire they target right so so this is going to be dead flashing fire is going to be dead even Slumber and Gary are going to be dead so we want a turbo into sanctify that's basically the game plan here that beats the runix we want to get rid of the barrier statue and then we want to be able to just use our regular anti stun tools right so Chimera branded King and Furious so we start with the fish burial we're going to start with the tragedy we want to get to Albert as our normal Simon We own draw a card first because we want the tragedy to be in the deck so now we send and we send alas the reason we send alvas is because we have CIA we want to protect our alra from exactly freezing curses so we're going to spash to summon the guts easier first we can still do this under the the light statue because it's a light and we can still summon Grand grol as well because this is also a light so we're going to draw a card you special summon normal summon everything's in attack position because because we can attack over this Li statue you want to threaten it and we get branded Fusion we're not expecting Ash here because we know that this is a stun Deck with pretty sure the hand is full of runes and barrier statues we summon the sanctifier I put it in the extra most Zone just in case we fill up alamain monster and I send Maximus because I have a bunch of Bisal likely I'm going to want to banish this card so I don't want to use my one and only Quin so we start by just going battle phase and then here before we attack the hugan you'll notice that because we have two besal we can actually threaten lethal why we can summon both of these besal by banishing two two monsters from the graveyards and that's going to be lethal right Aon is on 6,000 can attack her with a hugan and then the rest is lethal so what this is going to do is either win the game or it's going to force our opponent to spend their runics to summon monsters right or if it's flashing fire or fic Slumber they might Target our our monsters and that's exactly what happens they have to summon Gary now what this means is that we can play a bit safer in Ming Faith 2 um golden jaas wasn't going to threaten us but there's always a chance that their army runics in hand were things like freezing cursors and a slum bear or flashing fire right things that um actually disrupt Us in main Phase 2 so it was important to force force them now we can just basically combo off we're going to go try and set up as much as we can we're going to get Ki and this is where we get freezing cast our plan was to go gruno and or it was to make um Furious right with the two obals furious be really good we get to pop Fountain they can't protect it with hugan because they have Gary in the extra most of sim so we would just pop Fountain and that would be pretty good for but they negate our C easia and they banish nothing important just another shrouded this is where they draw um so now we have to consider the possibility of new runic although at this point most of the scary ones have been used is only flashing fire that really means anything destruction isn't that important so we're going to summon the kit let's guess is the brand in white we do have albis in the graveyard so we can make Furious here but instead of making Furious directly it's worth going for albon thr just because it puts a body on the board which is good but the stun and is also going to be out access to a brand of King in the end phase so here there's the option of using Furious to pop albon and the ronic Fon and then albon can set branded King in the end phase but there's actually a slightly better way to do it which is to pop Saria because Saria can send the Rebellion which is going to let us tribute to Alon it's the same position but we get branded lost for free so now we get to set the Branded King and at this point it's pretty unwinable for stum um their best attempt of winning this adding CIA back by the way might have been a mistake I think we should have left it in the graveyard for sanctifier but that's a small thing this is very hard to come back from our opponent would need things like sphere mode in the hand um admittedly that wasn't unlikely because they did brick um we assumed it was runix and statues but it could have been board Breakers we know that they're playing evenly matched so it could have been mob evenly matched and it could have been something like um sphere mode right or lava Golem they start by popping up Brandon King which forces it out we don't use it because we don't want to negate our Furious Dragon there's no point to do that they tribute to summon Magi fend but at this point there's just nothing they can do the deck is not equipped deal with the situation and they surrender when you're going first against a labyrinth you want to use Brandon in red to summon Chimera during your opponent's end phase to destroy two of their backr you can also try to summon a furious dragon as well to destroy potentially a third backr having Furious dragon on your field at the start of your turn three is important as it could be changed to powerful flu Gates like skill drain and rivor in general against Labyrinth creating value one of your cards is often more important than creating disruptions arriving things like albon and quem all going out of your way to access cesia and grino can be an important part of out grinding Labyrinth as long as your opponent has one unknown backrow respecting the possibility of karma Cannon is important so you shouldn't ever commit into an otk just to lose to one Karma Cannon instead you should be focused on out grinding Labyrinth by spamming the board of loss of big monsters and continuously removing the back row with furious stength when you're going second one of the things you want to do is chain your quick effects to the opponent's trap cards to prevent your opper from using ladyes effect this can be important as the Trap card they trying to set is probably dimensional barrier if they're playing it which they can potentially use right away with K clu for this reason if you have multiple quick effects in your hand you should consider saving them as interruptions for your opponent's lady banishing lovely with marage a is high value as most Labyrinth decks will be only plain one and they have no good way of accessing their lovely again once it's banished something else that comes up against Labyrinth is the fact that you cannot chain monster effects to the opponent's normal trap cards while they control lovely Labyrinth the way to get around this on your own turn is to toble on when you summon miror Jade so that you can banish it in response to its own summon using merid while you have priority like that is important as if the opponent was a to use a chap cut like punishments or Karma Cannon then you wouldn't get a chance to chain your marriage Aid before it gets removed another thing that Labyrinth does these days is to use simultaneous equation Cannon this SC is very difficult to get your head around that being said this card is easy to understand once you start playing with it or playing against it quite a bit one of the easiest ways to beat this card is to always allow yourself to remove monsters from your field so that you can deny them the appropriate solution often it requires a certain level to be on your field to resolve like a level eight for example or a level six so by keeping miror jate lie to remove your own monsters is going to be pretty important for beating equation com another thing you can do is try to generate so much card advantage that they always have way too many cards for any valid solution what you get to this point in the game as long as you can keep your card advantage the opponent is pretty much screwed as they can never use their equation Cannon here's a graph that shows the valid solutions to equation Cannon and using this can help you understand exactly when and how your opponent can use equation Canon anyway here is an example game against Labyrinth [Music] [Music] that's [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] against ritual Beast the thing you have to be most scared of is the protos lock calling dark against a ritual Beast board like this on top of the protos dark lock it can be really hard to play for it that being said said there are a couple ways that you can try to play into this the first way is to have evenly matched evenly match will break this board pretty easily leaving your opponent with only a little bit of followup it's still not trivial to win these games since appal loser can still often be enough to beat you but you do still have better chances of winning a Grind game the second way to play into this board is to use the light monsters that you can still summon to break some of the board and then set up the means to play on your opponent's next turn once the protos Locker is expired sanctifier is pretty good for this s you car be targeted by Rari and getting opening into the graveyard is important too for playing around STS if your deck is 60 cards a ritual Beast player is likely to go for protos calling dog however if your deck is 40 cards it would probably not choose to do this and they would probably go for protos calling fire Instead This is an interesting mind game that you could use to try and get a small Edge against ritual Beast opponents if the ritual Beast player has Colossus instead of protos it's usually a lot easier to beat drawing cars like albas deployment cesia and super poly or branded Fusion directly will all very easily remove Colossus there are some hands though that do unfortunately just completely fall to Colossus like this one when you're using your engine to disrupt ritual Beast it's usually best to use your miror J banish on canah Hawk and ramenu before they can use their ignition effects it's important to stop atol Beast early and should be especially careful of Lara's graveyard effect as a can bellad a furious dragon and guardian Chimera here's an example of our game against ritual Beast okay so here we have a game against ritual Beast you see my hand is really really crazy we have access to the the steel combo Sur rendum we even have a hard drawn branded Fusion so we can get cesia with um keeper right we can get deployment and then that summons Pia and now we're protected from from in P pal uh we even have thirst to set duplication so a hand is really really crazy even the shrouded is a good draw because we have to discard it for keep it the reason to discard it instead of using it first is because we don't know exactly how we're going to use this yet if we go for the full Ren brim line the chances are we just want to use this to send branded sword to get mcua back from banished but because we don't exactly know how we're going to play it because of hand traps um we can you Pi for just keeping the option alive right theoretically we could have used it to try and find coold by the grave but the chances are low so I decided to just discard it our opponent chains Max the year which is bad Maxi is one of the worst cards they could have had because now this hand gets a lot weaker we go for Branded fusion and it gets ashed so the reason we still activated branded Fusion was because it's still worth it one extra draw just to someon sanctifier is generally worth it I we also need to put it in the graveyard because we want to Target it with duplication so then we go thrust this sets duplication so now in the opponent's turn we can still use duplication might as well search for the S here by the way because it has a trigger effect if we discard it and then we send albas shrouded because we just want albas in the graveyard it's better if we duplicate and full the belly in or albon and then banish albas or Shuffle it into the deck it's good to have one spend the G to revise with a potential Ren bom so our opponent dra is Maxi which is a crazy card in this match up again to just have on your own turn as the second copy it's really really good they start with this card which reveals they playing ritual Beast and then start with small world I consider chaining to the small world because I don't want them to search for another Maxi here I know that that would be really strong um but in the end I decide not to chain because we would still be giving them some drills anyway and I wanted to gamble on the chance that they needed to use this to search for an engine card and they do they search for Laura so I'm happy to see the Lara and then normal summon get hook here I decide to stop playing I decide I'm going to banish the K and the reason is because this is pretty strong uh banishing can out pretty strong deception against against ritual Beast especially when they have only two CES left in hand um but then they chain the Maxi and then we're forced to chain the cutesy here just to minimize the draws but this is going to be pretty bad because we're going to have to do a lot of Splash summons we're not actually playing the requim luck in this version so we can't go for a requim luck right now but that's fine I think it's it's fine to not go for a RAC lot anyway I think it's reasonable to think that you can disrupt this without needing requium oh for the Maxi is going to make it very difficult so we go for albon the reason we go albon is because um we just want to keep as many bodies on the board as possible and I want to keep the S as a potential um body to summon and we trigger the grand grol is CH up too this sends Gora I'm sending Gora here because I want to card to discard for alas right we have a second one so I'm going to go marade here and now I want the option of sending Ren or buy do albas and then discarding a card to fuse the idea is that even though they're going to draw a lot of cards if we stop them and they'll die our followup might be able to win the game we just need to survive the [Music] ntk so here we banish the canah hook all in one chain so that we can't so they don't have a chance to trigger it we now have an extra card in hand to discard for alz and a be steal to summon I'm feeling pretty confident about my chances of surviving the time however if they can get to a protos luck it's still potentially quite hard Falls so what we could consider doing at this point is holding RB only for protu this is another reason why going albon was really good it's because we want actually to have two discards and we want to be able to fuse with the protest right want to fuse with the prus because it's a dark and and that's what we want to save our M for so our opponent starts with when which they go for when now which is really strong it's probably the perfect counter to marage J here because it just brings the canah hwk right back um we can't do anything about this there's no reason to use um our Ren Brom yet I think we've decided that the only way we're going to win is if we confused with the protest [Music] so we trigger to summon quam and we send mcua the idea is that this is just another disruption they have to play through at some point we're just going to revive this when they summon from the extra deck and then because we control the marage it's going to negate right so when we have an extra must in the gate the activate inheritance now now they go for the link two the link two is pretty good they haven't they haven't got a normal summon left so I decide to revive and then negate this this effect is going to normal summon again because we know they have the lar that's going to be two bodies for the price of one and I just think that's not worth it we might as well might as well negate with mcua especially because this card only tags out for um oh no this tags out for two I thought for a second this tags out for one it it's noty drao that tags out for one but they still have a way to extend here they're going to the Beni this is how they get to protest and this is where we are wanting to summon rinda I wanted to summon ala sorry with [Music] Rin so they I summon the link four and then I looked at the exro deck I love to see if they can have three different attributes to banish for protos they absolutely do they have Ash Maxi Lara Renu different attributes um however I make a mistake here I use the renam for some reason I decide that this was the best play I should have waited for protest um but I thought I could clear the link for here so we go into Titanic lead and I mistakenly think that I'm safe from protos I think my reasoning was that we're going to send opening and that's going to protect my monsters from protos and nothing can die by battle because they're getting too big and that's it right we're going to we're going to go on to win however there is something I forget about which is the better they can make SP and they make a really good play here which is to actually banish opening from the gravat now they can call du destroy their own sp but that doesn't matter they're destroy my monsters they even get to use cold by here on Titanic lead the protest doesn't die the marade can't kill it we get back some resources but we're in trouble now cuz we are top decking with very few followup given that we have a protos look but we can still do an elev we go for shrouded and we dra High Spirits our only option here is to go for Maximus because of the protos look it's not like um feel like we can go for cesia we've already used our granel you don't have another one in the extra back then they just go for Book of eclipse that I want to deal with the Maximus they sumon C easia just for the opponent's turn and then here in the end phase by toggling on the book of eclipse draw gives me one draw and it ends up being shrouded so we use the High Spirits this let's as send the Alum search for alpas which we can now fuse with the cesia we can even now set Brandon and breed so here I had this plan what we're going to do is activate cesia to make sanctifier then we can use sanctifier to revive well anything right because we're not protos Lots anymore so it can be marriage a it can be yeah it'll be marriage a um but could also be alaz to try if he's away the protos right we have lellan back of the extra deck so we could do it that way um and then we had Brandon in red as well for Chimera at any time however when they flip and we go to activate cesia I end up making Chimera because somehow when building my deck I forgot to put sanctify in here so this was going to be a really good game and I still think was okay it was worth showing the 10 to but we end up messing up here because we forgot to play Santi play the last attempt we have here is to Simply summon marade banish the protest and then hope that they can't kill me or at the marage but of course they can they have a lot of followup themselves so they just go on to play my board here and otk [Music] [Music] voiceless voice is generally considered to be a good matchup for Branded and the reasons for this is that the voiceless voice board is very beatable on its own since outside of any non-engine cars they might have they usually only set up two to three descriptions and brended is pretty good at playing into weak boards additionally Sis's effect to negate special summons can only negate inherent special summons like late summons or Synchro summons Fusion summons can't be negated by surus since they aren't inherent summons which means branded can ignore suris for the most part the only inherent summons that sis could potentially catch you out on is the special summon of lellan from your graveyard or the link summon of Verte another reason why Brandon is good against voiceless voice is that the main disruption skull Guardian is an activation negation branded plays pretty well into activation negations since he can use branded loss to counter them and he can also use retribution and tragedy to try again on a brand of fusion that had its activation the Gated also the voiceless voice monsters are all light monsters which is the best attribute for alas to fuse with and the targeting protection from barrier is not relevant since so many of Brandon's removal effects do not actually Target a really good play you can make against V's voice is to try and banish with miror Jade when they try to attack with their skull Guardian sending Titanic Le to the great God as cost if they let your mirid resol you can banish the low which will reduce the attack of the skull Guardian causing it to crash into your mirade and this will then not trigger the prayers in the graveyard if they negate your mirade then it will destroy your marade so you can trigger Mar's graveyard effect when destroyed which they won't be able to negate since they already use the negate then during the end phase you can use Titanic Hut to sew an elbaz which can Infuse with the skull Guardian into albon which then summons another mirade it doesn't matter if they use the pr here to replace that skull Guardian since you still have bead's lingering effect to resolve so you can easily just destroy the second one in general voic this voice is another match up like Labyrinth where getting value into play can be more important than setting up actual disruptions one thing that is important to be aware of against voices voice is tyon this card is always in the extra deck and it's a real threat against branda's disruptions even though your opponent isn't going to otk you a Typhon they can use it to cut off your followup as it will disallow you from activating mirror Jade so it's important to respect this card where you can't here is an example game against voiceless voice okay so now we have a game against voiceless voice we are going first and you can see that we didn't open up many options other than just alra so we have alra one combo or we have Al was High Spirits as a two good combo um we don't know what we're playing against we won the coin flip so we have no idea if it's 10 pi or anything it's just a 40 card de but the hand is generally okay if the AL combo canol then duplication plus super poly is going to be pretty strong right but we are weak to hand trap here the Ala plus High Spirit combo should end on this end board you can also end on this end board um however for this line specifically this game I was actually playing Estella in my deck so what I wanted to do was go for the Estella one cut combo just to try it out and I actually don't think it's a terrible decision here if you are playing it I think it works pretty well in this exact situation so the Estella combo works by sending it to the gray with branded fusion and then when you activate lellan the discard as long as you discard a spell trap we're going to discard the thrust the Estella will trigger right if a spell trap is sent to the graveyard you have to special summon it so we're going to make marriage Aid like usual and now we're going to get to summon the Estell we just got the thrust first because this card also requires another spell trap to send so we are also going to discard the High Spirits um will we send the first first because this is a little stronger this is more of an extender the first doesn't really do anything because the only good Target to set in this current build is um dication and we already have it so it just cut the thrust and if we do get nied or impaled or something we could still potentially use the High Spirits by activating marade right and get to um quen in the end phase which is still going to still going to make the the Branded and High Spirits life so we discard the thrust first now we use the Estella to summon up cesia this is the one card line you don't summon quam here you just summon cesia because if you summon a quam you have no way of getting cesia onto the feel not without activating the m so yeah you fuse away the albon to put it into the graveyard some a Titanic lad with grel and that giv you qu we don't have Elbas yet so we're going to send Elbas and then we get to set branded in red um because we didn't use High Spirits we get to add it back to the hand and we're also going to get Gia back to the hand so now we have a really strong end B Aron and didn't have any hand traps so we have super poly that's fly we have a discard for it we have duplication which can summon a rim lock we also have a discard for the lellan the miror Jade is live there an alas in the graveyard or Ren Bram there a quan there's a Gro and there's also a branded in Red so this B is pretty hard to beat for any deck um but voice this voice is going to struggle to play against this especially so our opponent has a hand full of engine and extenders but but your Ash return which is unfortunate um although this can be good against Grand gal still um so they try to play into it they start with sephira and then they reveal that they have barrier and they search for low they then try to Ritual summon when they ritual summon with below into skull Guardian the thing to consider here is that once the low hits the board you they have an neate I so you are kind of usually you're forced to remove skull Guardian now in response it's also going to make the T to protection live um so what's going to happen is this is going to activate and this is our last chance to interact with our opponent without them having the targeting protection or the negate um however we actually decide not to do anything our removal doesn't Target so we don't care about barrier and because we have so much going on we decide that it's actually better to just hold the Mir Jade so we let them summon they search for the serrus the summon this actually Tri his grandal which we're going to use we activate it now because there's no guarantee that they will activate it again this card will trigger it but there's no guarantee that they will use it this time so we try to an be Gro and that's when they use ash this makes sense this is a good Ash against Brandon um on your own turn and then you get out the Trap so the Trap is going to let them pop a card at any time or summon them extender from the deck right so we activate mirror Jade on resolution we're just trying to force the skull Guardian here we send rir because we have Alan they're forced to use it there a chain to destroy the quen this is because quen will trigger on the new chain because Ren left our extra deck so this is smart and we just decide the chain so that we can summon the the elz now the reason we summon it now is because we're going to get to play around ghost ogre on the resolution so the way this resolves is marij gets negated and destroyed and then on a new chain we get Alba's chic one and then marij chaining too so now play around ghost logo [Music] and um this is a pretty good situation and in general when you use marade versus voiceless voice and they negate it with skull Guardian it's pretty fine because that means the graveyard effect resolves which is problematic for them it means they can't set up that much and you also get a lot out of it right removing your own marade is sometimes good for you it means you can summon another one and that's exactly what we're going to do now we're get to go for alvon we remove the skull Guardian even though they have prayers in the graveyard which can replace it by summoning out another one but we do it because we just want to force the Press we know that in the end phrase Mirra Jade is going to clear everything so by forcing the Press now we're ensuring that in the end phase there's that actually nothing on the board right because marade will destroy it and we won't be able to tricker prize because they've already used it and natur decides not to use it probably for for that exact reason we banish the Titanic Cloud for the second marade we leave the first marade in the graveyard just because there's a chance that we can revive it with banishment or quen so we just banish the Titanic lead and now we banish this is important we manag immediately to play around tyon tyon would be summonable and that would be pretty good we would get to it would get to walk over the mered and bounce the albian and it would that would in theory put away our followup quite nicely um from that perspective but the duplication would have still saved was there The Branding red would have been pretty good too um so we banish it just to play around tyon anyway they go for the cabus and then you have another extender they can actually keep playing but it's not enough we have more renewal and super poly against the voiceless deck is a lot better when you have mud dragon but we're not playing mud dragon we're playing Just Gora this extra deck is pretty tight so we didn't have we didn't have room for both of [Music] them so we just decided to flip the Branded in red now and here because we have access to two pops with chimer and then duplication can remove another card by going into um Furious dragon we just decid to pop the two monsters and bu trigger the pr and we're just playing around Typhon by removing every monster that they summon this is their last monster We Now flip the duplication and that's going to get us to Furious Dragon you send tragedy there's no reason to go for a Rec unlock in this match of most of the time although it would have been pretty good if we did that in the standby phase um but we choose not to we just played the engine we get tragedy instead now because it's small followup and Furious Dragon just removes the skull Guardian from here it's it's over our opponent surrenders Centurion is another deck that you have a fairly comfortable match up against with branded especially going first one thing you can do if you know you're playing against Centon is to play around besal since that deck usually repl a lot of them you can do this by setting up branded loss before resolving branded Fusion or by summoning lellan with branded Fusion instead of albian when you're disrupting Centurion one of the easiest ways to win is to banish their Primera with miror Jade as it is there only tuna this is pretty much always a good play however it's especially a good play if they've activated primary's effect to Surge that turn and already use their normal Su since there would then be no possible way for them to summon another primary due to Hell primary's effect locks them out of species summoning another primary for the rest of the turn the endb the Centurion often consists of dragons auxilla blazar and Bisal are all dragons which means that contact fing into alal lenus is a viable strategy for breaking these boards I'm usually pretty skeptical though about breaking a board like this since it does often require you to commit a lot to it and it's very possible to break Centurion board without going for lines if you can easily summon an alas though like with deployment or with a Quin then it can be really threatening to have that option available something important to remember is that blazar dragon can negate normal summons so don't be fo into thinking that you can beat it by normal summoning albas while you have branded lost on the field blazar can just negate the summon of albas if your opponent wants to here is an example game against Centurion okay so this is n game is Centon we have pretty good hand here we have branded Fusion heart gone and then we also have other plays we have heisers post alars heers po shrouded shrouded is its own play Brendan and red is going to let you um lay through hand trps pretty well um and it's also a strong piece of the end board if we get there so this is a pretty good hand going first so for this for this game I actually knew that I was against Centon so my my f process going first is that we have not much obligation to make a super strong end Bo because Centurion is pretty weak at breaking a board so as long as we're able to end on something competent like marade plus a little bit more then then the centory end de probably doesn't beat me right like if I end on miror Jade and a back row that resolves something like banishment or branding red but it's probably going to be enough to stop Centurion because they really only have one or two pushes and if you take away Primera for example they might just struggle to do anything at all right so they might just Le to one miror aade um so my priority here when I thought about how to play this hand was to play through hand traps the Centurion deck's win condition going second in this match up is just to draw multiple hand traps and stop me from playing right I you see here they actually have drew multiple hand traps but I of course don't know that so my objective is to play around hand traps as best as I can and to reliably make a board of at least miror Jade right so what I'm going to do is play R rooll in the draw phas by activating High Spirits want to discard the shrouded I mean the the Alba is not the shrouded the reason why we discard the alas is because what I want to do here is search for cesia then special summ in the cesia now I have pretty much infinite plays that are insulated from impa right look like a a branded Fusion or I draw something with shrouded it's going to be protected from impal and vea because I have cesia on the board so that's my plan and the reason why it has to be regular alvas and not shrouded is because we have branded in red which is another way of playing around imp pom and B right if they try to imp pom something we could chain branded in red Target an albas in the graveyard and then fuse away to monster on the field this works best with actual alas because shrouded dragon is not treated as alas while it's in the hand so once we add it back to the hand with branded and red we could make like a miror jade with this whereas if it was this we could still make like a mirade or a nellan or something like that um and then the only other way of playing around hand traps that I can think of here is holding the brand of fusion right this is a one of they don't expect me to Drew this card especially in 60 so what I could do is just pretend that I don't have it use my other cars pretend to be trying to get to branded fusion and then if they have any hand WS they are certainly going to use those hand DS on those cards and then we can resolve branded Fusion after so that's my plan that's why we're playing in the draw face here and that's why we're getting cesio we sent Titanic because we're go we're going to s quen in the end phase Grand of fusion easily gets to Alon so we might as well go for aam as well so I'm going to start by special summoning the reason why I don't draw a card is because I actually need this um dark body for cesia I actually want to fuse it with cartesia so my plan here is to play around hand traps the best I can by actually going for cesia this for using Brandon Fusion so I'm unhiding that I have this card so what what I'm going to do is activate shrouded and the chain this is going to allow me to use the albon body as material before it goes back into the deck and by sending the shrouded by sending the retribution with shrouded first we can now access branded fusion with gr gell by sending s out is something that our opponent thinks we're doing we obviously already have it but Arona thinks that that's what we're doing and therefore they are likely to want to stop it they have imp pom this could probably go on cesia here or Grano Grano is a good inom if you start with cesia so here we activate granal and this is baiting impal or vea or even gamma is this resolves and we send Sania we can actually search for like branded in white for example because we have this second albas in the GRE good so that can just be an extender it's not redundant if it resolves but ideally we actually made a hand trap with this and it works ionic uses a hand trap we now get the chain branded in Red so this didn't really matter which one we discarded with the shrouded but of course by using with the with the High Spirits however by choosen specifically to discard the albas here and then hold the shrouded for later we were able to send the retb which is kind of what made this Grand Corel so threatening and it might have been what prompted the impo so I think it was correct to discard the alas here it doesn't matter because we have both of them now but that's going to let us get to mirid and that's going to cause our gr all this so we now have mirade which is pretty much step one we know that Centurion is going to be weak to this card all we have to do is banish primara and they're going to be struggling especially if it was their normal summon so now our grand final actually resolves and we're going to send Saria which is going to send the branded in white so we don't have the elbow in the graveyard anymore but we do have throwed which is treated as elbow so what we could do is activate retribution add back branded and white and then use the sirenia plus the shouted to make Furious drag and the reason why that plays good is because he actually beats Ash so if we now get ashed on this branded fusion and way is still going to be able to set up multiple [Music] disruptions and we don't get Ed so we're going to go for albon now because we already to use lellan right no we haven't used lellan but because we don't have a disc card we we don't really want to be going the Bellion here so summoning Furious directly is pretty good which is what we do so we now removed the two do dragons for Branded in white but what we can still do is I well was summon Furious anyway so it doesn't really matter but we can still add back Randon and white and make some kind of play with it for example we can make sanctifier by banishing cesia and alz however there's no reason to actually go go crazy because like I said we don't need we don't need a crazy strong end board to beat Centurion so what I'm going to do here is just use ration to add bate the Branded in Red so that we have some extra disruption for the opponent's time and now we get Quan we already have elbows and cesia in the graveyard so what I choose to do here is just something that gets me an extra discard in the hand an extra monster discard as well that way branded in red into Kimera is going to be pretty good and let we get gamut on this albon here which I found was a mistake I feel like this is a slightly weird gamma but I guess there was no real good time to use gamma earlier yeah like you could maybe have gamed the effect of albon on the seal but then you would have still had to deal with the end phase effect and that would set like a branded in red or a B A banishment um but because they already knew we had the Branded and red in the graveyard and we had the ability to get it back I feel like this was a a strange gamma um but yeah at the same time what are they going to do they can't use it anymore I'm not going to play they might as well use it on this albon now using it on Quan was also possibility truthfully I think using it on cesia would have been the most effective because we didn't have a a plan to that right we we would have just followed up with brand of Fusion on its own for the most part we didn't really have a plan for gamma on kesia but our opponent couldn't have known that so they didn't want to turn off their own inom right by summoning gamma to the field first and but now that we have this board is pretty much unusable because our opponent is on Ford cards and they're playing centurium and we have you know three different ways of removing monsters we're going to start with Joyce one bals are like some of the best attempt at breaking a branded board in Centurion but it's not enough in this case so here I actually do make a mistake um the Centurion field spell cannot be destroyed by Cod effects while they control a centurion monster cut so what I do is I try to destroy it with furious but because they have emblem oath they can exceed chain to punish me and that's exactly what they do so they can now place a monster in the backr and a centurion the stand up Centurion will resolve because it doesn't get destroyed um one small thing that they do which I think was a tiny mistake was setting Primera with emblem o instead of truda I think we should have done it the other way around just because emblem oath has this has this line where it says that you can't special from the extra deck except centurions while you control the card with that name right and that name is Primera so yeah no no I think this was actually maybe okay maybe it was okay I feel like it mattered because yeah it matters in this game because what happens is I choose to banish the two instead of just waiting for era which was honestly sensible um I instead choose to just banish pra at the tra I know that it doesn't matter because we know the hand is dra one we know that there's nothing that they can do to stop me so I just banish this for the sake of ease but generally you want to banish this card and in this exact scenario this is why it mattered if they had done it the other way around they could make TI on here which would out some of my board which is um pretty scary so that's why I have to use Ren brm on resolution I don't have to because this card is actually under emblem at o but I think at the time I actually forgot that they couldn't make tyon so I chose to play around tyon here um we can always beat the Bal because in response to the Bal we could change branded in red and instead of going Chimera I just choose to make another mirror Jade [Music] okay so here I decided to go and do some flashy plays we triggered aam we triggered everything we went for albon with cesia and we summon sanctifier at this point I think sometime during the combo I realized that they can't summon tyon so I decided to just not bother activating my nade waited for that battle phase then badish Primera they set the Trap and at this point they can't win so I'm pretty sure they just leave the game at this point which is going to attack for game yeah so that was a a strong showing against Centurion um the most important thing to take away is that playing around hraps and ending on something is more important against Centurion than making the strongest end board possible in the Brandon mirror match the player who goes first is favored to win however it's not an unwinnable match up when you go second especially when there is a skill gap between Players management is really important in the mirror match since resolving it can be game winning on his own often you can revive a powerful Fusion Monster like marij Jade to your field and then fuse away two of your opponent's monsters into Furious dragon dellia or even gruol if they have CAU easy often you will try to play around banishment if you can and one of the best ways to do that is with branded lost by resolving branded Fusion or any Fusion summon for that matter while branded lost is on the field you able to potentially access cards like Furious dragon algotti and chimera to destroy your opponent's banishment drawing a branded lost window branded lost is really good in general in the mirror match as it can allow you to do things like play around both effects of your opponent's mirade and so it's usually important to not let your opponent have branded L if you can one of the best ways to beat branded lost is to summon Furious dragon and destroy it and this is particularly effective when it's done in response to your opponent's branded Fusion to play around the possibility of your opponent having another branded lost or a way to get their branded L back super poly is really good in the mirror match as it can summon albas fusions or grono pretty easily with your opponent's monsters and it's also really hard to outk for super poly can be used in response to your opponent cesia all branded in red which can force them into fusing into something that they didn't want to Fusion duplication is also really strong in the mirror since it can tet the opponent's graveyard not just your own so what you want to do with tu in the mirror match is banish your OPP's branded Fusion instead of your own this keeps The Grind game intact while removing your opponents it can also be a game-winning play to banisher oppon a banded fusion with duplication in response to their attempt to add it back with retribution sanctifier is a very strong and safe play in the mirror match since it can't be fused Away by things like banishment or super poly and it also has an easier time Reviving strong monsters since your opponent graveyard is going to be full of branded moners as well sanctifier is usually pretty wheat to cold by the grave but you can play around that in the mirror match by only targeting most is from your opponent's gradient here is an example of a branded mirror match okay so we have a branded mirror match now our opponent is going first and they have two duplication and a ad one and then emesis cardo this deck is actually not pure branded this is a branded tier Deck with Colossus which is why they're playing a Caro it's close enough to regular branded so that's why I'm including it as these replays um but they're going first and the hand is not great they have to draw something with a l otherwise they're trouble we have one hencher and the rest of a hand is pretty good for going s especially in a mirror match um but let's see how our opponent plays this so they start by banishing the chice one they have no other choice they joined the High Spirits albad so they might as well go for this combo they still don't really have a [Music] choice so they reveal and you send Titanic Blood sending Titanic Blood is fine you can either send Titanic clad or albian this is the the gambling bill or the gambling method this is assuming that your branded Fusion bols the strongest thing to do however it branded Fusion doesn't resolve it is a bit safer to send ALB on because you already have a branded in bread Target so you would have a decent play with branded in red if your branded Fusion was to get ashed if it wasn't to get ashed though then the Titanic B is better because you're going to get to branded Fusion you're going to get to alium anyway right um and I think it's honestly reasonable for them to not bu R Ash they see that my deck is 60 cards it's probably a mirror match um and then search for shrouded I think shrouded is a mistake here because shrouded doesn't go anywhere by itself you should just get Spring's kit here and then search for Branded fusion and do a one card combo you have one card combo plus Titanic rout of the end phase plus duplication that's a good enough board you probably have to discard this but you can also discard this right this well these goes back for kit and then you discard this for Rebellion that's a fine combo to me I don't see anything wrong with it but they chose to get shrouded um and their idea is probably just to make dup life maybe they didn't see that the springan kit was a possibility and they sent Brandon Fusion which is good because that makes that dup live so even if they draw that card they can still dup on my terms and then they join to the the L belly which actually makes this all work out even better than if they set K cuz they they can get toia they banish the elbow and now they can tribute and that pairs with shrouded to search for brandan so now they get to branded Fusion they activate lell in here no I have impo I could negate this in the Branded mirror match branded lost is really important so there's a good argument to imp here however I know that this isn't stopping much of their play because they have brand trusion anyway they still have a normal summon is a lot that they could do so I decide that given that my hand has a lot of discard effects right this requires a discard this requires a discard this also requires a discard I decid to just keep my imp from my own turn and use it as a discard so I let them bring out branded lost and resolve branded Fusion is in the golden sword so because they already have Rebellion so there's no reason to send another one and they use Alan chanic one which is to keep the Branded lost Windows and he search from Aura and then they choose to make R from by banishing that mccuan so this triggers the mcua which is good and it gets into search for cesia CIA can't be spal summoned there's no albas in the graveyard but they can just normal summon it because they still have their normal summon so that's what they do now here the activate cesia my fa process was that they have albow in hand and this is how they're going to get albon into the graveyard they don't have albon in the graveyard yet so in order for them to get into the graveyard they probably need to resolve cesia and they probably also have alas in a hand because they didn't go for marij Jade they went for renen right they could have done this the same way by making lellan instead we could have still banished mcua they would have just had to discard one of their cards um which they still have three of so I felt the only reason not to go Rebellion here and discard a card is so you can get RN Brom and mirid and that would mean that they have albas in hand and and even if they don't have alas in hand cesio resoling definitely puts albon in at the great out anyway through grono right they going to fuse away the album so my thought peria was that this actually a really good value input that's what I do because this now prevents potential banishment which is crazy in the miror match and it alsoe prevents marade [Music] so another import is likely to be a lot wor then the activate cardal this puts back in albow and allows them to make Colossus Colossus says that we CAU such so that means we can't add with opening we can't add with alabra we can still draw cards though um yeah we can still draw them we shout it but we cannot sash them with Aliva and then he set two and pass so what I see two set Cuts I see probably a duplication and probably a brand new red because what's the reason to set B right we have no disc Cuts in hand um we do get a discard with attribution on the Apollo's time but that's still just one discard right so I think to myself Miss quy no alaz I thought there was an alaz but this clearly not so now the CES here is only threatening to make grol or trigger to pellia unless they resolve a fusion first right with banded blast and then they can search for an elbow um I think they made a mistake I think they should have kept one duplication in hand given that it's once pan but this is how we chose to play it and we draw into a Crosser I'm happy to see the Crosser because this this probably negates any back row right with the exception of super poly we can chain to anything they have managment or or Brandon a red or duplication and we can cross it out so it would actually be be pretty good I start with albas and the reason I start with albas here is because say I see this board and there's no marade there's currently no marade and marade is the the strongest thing the Brandon has to beat an albath there's also no discard for super poly which is the other strongest thing they can have and there's also no room to activate banishment which is the third strongest thing they can have right so their way in preventing albas feere is quite limited they would have to have like a droplets or an imp pom set nothing else on the end board can negate this so I decide to go straight for it we disc called the shrouded because we don't exactly know how the t is going to play out yet so I'm just keeping my shrouded options available that's why we didn't draw a card first we just put it into the gray Now options for what to fuse into it's pretty much just miror Jade we really want to fuse away this because you want to be able to search without our ala we also want to get rid of this because this negates our maror Jade um and that's pretty much it that we don't need to get rid of this this is a vanilla and we don't need to get rid of any of these these are not that scary yet but cesia is a little bit scary because it triggers brand at last but getting a marate is really important here now here they chain cesia and they're threatening to make either drag saelia or Gro I was thinking probably it's just gruel because aalia would involve getting rid of one of the good monsters right what um the non fusions are all liked so they have to get rid of the albon and then one of their boss monsters so I was expecting this to make Grand gal and I don't think any other any other Target to someone is very good right there's chitis with with the despers they have a desia here so they can make ktis if they're playing it um I decid it's the best choice to do here is to chain Superfly and we discard the opening the reason we discard the opening is because I really want to be able to cross out the back row at this point I feel like we've beaten the board except for the back row we can still play with opening in the graveyard still added back the retribution um and which used to make a grol here by getting rid of the Colossus so getting our own gral on the field is rather good because that extends our plays it allows us to sear for Branded Fusion through alz but taking away their cut easier denies them the chance of making their own Grand so now they need to resolve and they have to make ktis right if they were to make drag to pellia they would have to get rid of that Ren brm and then here our alas resoles we can clear the ren brm the Mir we don't want to clear the kidus because it would trigger but we do want to clear the the ren brm because it negates n get so marade they don't have an alas in the graveyard to revive so the red brm isn't that scary which have both effects because they resolve cesia and a trigger branded lost but there's nothing they can do here that really matters the only thing they can search is a discard for the sake of having a discard for duplication and they do just search a shrouded Dragon we get to summon Quan and we get to send the quen plus the Seria is going to allow us to get to branded Fusion plus something else we only need one right because we already have the shrouded so we can send retribution with sery and then the quum can actually be used to send cesia so that we have access to our own cesia they trigger the golden sword Soul which summons back their CL and we set a retribution and we send cesia and the coin is actually pretty good here because that can send Alber and that can pair with their RRM to now use this disc card and actually fuse it so that's something that we do need to be concerned about we have cross out for a potential aland that is something that I'm thinking about but we also just have marij Jade and marij Jade is like I said the best way to deal with an opponent's elz and that's what they do they send albas so we now send Ro to Brand Fusion they they try to chain they try to use the the renom bra way which is weird to me I decide to chain to add back here the reason I decide to chain is because I want to know if I need to use cross out on the back row this retribution back branded Fusion is what prompts duplication because they can Target my own dup uh they could Target my own branded fusion with duplication unless what they do this would ordinarily be an incredibly powerful play they would probably win the game from this but we do have to cross out and we now have to cross out the duplication so here they decide to summon renr instead of the albz which is a sensible Choice it's not something that you always get to do you can't summon vram unless it was originally summoned to the field first you usually only get to summon albas because you send this with marade but in this case it's better to actually summon the RNR because the AL would just be banished the miror Jade whereas the rroom actually checks the mirade this can negate miror Jade if I ever try to use it it is smaller though so it can just be attacked over we not go for Branded Vision now here is an interesting idea if we activate this albon the ren Brom actually negates it it can negate and bounce our miror which is actually a really powerful clay so one potential option here is to not use for helan but a better option is to Simply chain block it with quen because renm can't neate Quint what they do have set up yet is quidas plus renm combo this is a nice combo where you can actually use your corers at any time and then negate it with rurn to bouts a card at any time so that is something that we have to play in but it would be even better for our opponent if we were to activate our own Fusion Monster for them to negate that would be even stronger for them so we're avoiding that they now trigger their own quen this doesn't do much there's nothing in the grade yet to revive except for an albian it's just there for Value to be honest Reviving this was was a little strange because while it does turn turn mccu alive that didn't search for mcua or actually mcua would be alive anyway they have this this doesn't really do anything because it takes you down the grad where it was safely done to trigger in the end phase now it's actually just vulnerable to my miror jade so I don't think this was the right move it looks like a good move because they're just Ming up and protecting themselves from my combo but I think it was a mistake I we should have left him in the graveyard we don't even have to banish it we can just can just leave down the field we already have Merit so albon makes Furious and my plan here is that we're going to go battle phase and we're going to attack over the rbr the ktis and the Quin we're going to leave the albian on the field so it cut trigger we're going to keep alir in NE gate or banish I should say we're can only leave the bestial rebellion and they're not going to have much the end phase is going to add back high Birds it's going to add back cesia but they're not going to trigger Alon and we're going to be in a good position after we cleared the rrom we can then use our Furious we can use our marade we can use our Rebellion to Tribute it's going to be very strong we can dismantle the board after the battle pH in the end of the main phase they use ktis now what we could do here is chain something to disrupt the ren however because you've already been through our own Grand grenell there not not actually much to make we can make this we're playing pres skini in in this in this game we could make this without cesia but that would require fusing L Clen cesia and albon just to disrupt and the r and I don't think that was worth it so I just decided to let them bounce maybe in hindsight it was better but I thought it was too valuable to have these on the board so we go battle phase we attack over there the important cards and we Le the rain bom because it's already been used now so it's not scary we get the tribute we have to bring out branded loss branded losses are really important in the mirror match we can pop this last back R and here oh sorry we're not popping the background we're making it PR skin in first now we're popping the vro and then we get to search for alow this looks like it converts it our board into nothing but it's not true we have cesia plus Alba for the opponent's turn we have crinian which is actually kind of difficult to deal with because it can revive powerful monsters from the opponent's grave yet and now here I make a mistake I Target the Colossus I thought for some reason I could summon this but I can't it just gets banished and then in the end phase we have a set for banishment which is crazy in the mirror match we'll see that we're playing Dragon deelia so we can fuse away the renr and the albon into Dr stellia can proved our furious at the same time and PR branded lost we haven't been to around mccu yet so we can search for that it's going to be in the gate once began Cy a fusion but Alis so we have a really strong position our opponent adds by their cards but it's not nearly as strong it's our entries they use attribution um I'm not sure why they Ed attribution now but I guess it doesn't really matter and then in the standby by phrase we decide it's time to flip the reason we decided to flip is because their first action could be branded f in the main space and because they have their own branded lost it would be too late for me to trigger my branded lust I I was to chain managment I could summon furious and I could fuse away that board I wouldn't drink a branded loss and they would still have their own branded loss window to potentially dismantle my board so what de side we have to chain now that way we can definitely trigger our branded lost and more importantly we have Furious effect online to be able to destroy branded lost but they start by bringing out regain I was scared for a second I thought that I'd made a mistake I thought that I was going to get get um in trouble because a second branded last but they end up bringing out regain which I'm happy to see adding another branded loss would have been very good there now they activate branded fusion and we can chain to pop the Branded lost and then we train K so we're training k because we want Al mcua to be online as soon as possible then I'm going to have a branded lost window so if they summon Alan we can just negate it all right if they summon the Bellion we can negate it if they summon renr we can have that effect negated it's is just getting our options online as early as possible chain High Spirit we chain brainian brasini is going to bring the corers back to our our field and this is going to allow us to summon marij directly so we can keep her cesia on the field they send another grel actually I think it's our first grol and new search for Kit which they are playing refuse away their Kus into mer so this was just a way of avoiding going through another albian because we want to keep our K on the board we want to keep our resources intact one thing about the mirror match is that it's actually kind of hard otk through any kind of Bo so there's no chance of us dying here so I am just consing resources and building up my position we protect with opening again just because we are not that concerned about dying so we're just going to keep our Masters on the board they send Tillman's Hab nness for the Branded fusion and go into lellan now we can respond because because the D branded lost they use chaining three as regain that way we can't use mcua but we can still use Dragon stellia Dron Stell on the belline is a really good play now we've negated the effect and their ability to recycle cards has been has been eliminated although they do still have re V are making a masquerade here which I guess they don't play more than one miror or they haven't even B through marade in the first place I don't know why they didn't just make a marade but it wouldn't have been enough if they did make Mar Jade at this point we just have way too much this end [Music] opening magnamon is a good draw but I don't think it's quite good enough they're going to use kit now [Music] no and we negate this we negate this because this can get to Brandon and mine and this can finally get to mirade I think they delayed marij Jade too long and we should have made it with the the Havas right hav this can put back oh no haves could not hav this could not put back cuz they yeah I see so haves can make M Jade if you have Rebellion available but they had already used it with the Branded Fusion so yeah they couldn't have made marij Jade they were trying to make marij Jade here but they couldn't because we stopped them so we negate kit cuz that would get to branded and white they banish their own gr canol for some reason that feels like the worst Target to banish but I guess there might not be another Target in that and they're just putting it back in the deck so maybe it's actually the best Target they join to another bad card and I here I just decide to use the M want to get rid of the Masquerade so that I don't trap myself next turn with two low life points and here you can see that they just don't have anything the board is full of vanilla monsters their hand is full of no hand traps we add back cesia um and then we chain the RRM this is going to allow us to fuse in the end phase however I don't do it because I think I had only a couple of seconds and I'm winning anyway so I didn't want to worry about timing out so I just press no and then from here it's pretty straightforward we actually have a good otk so one thing about mosters in attack position that aren't Fusion mosters in the maror match is that you can otk them with kinus now we're not playing kers because we're playing presan in this deck but they are and we can actually take the aquaritis with brinan brinan then also has its own effect to afflict damage when it attacks so we can actually easily otk through this board you want to search for Kit going to make Rebellion a lot of this is unnecessary to be honest we could just revive the kius and attack but I wanted to show up I wanted to do some stuff we make aora here which actually attacks for 3,000 damage and now we pop the Bellion because he can't attack show into dup which is just a nail in the coffin we now bring out pidas make their field zero and they scoot [Music] okay so this is another branded mirror match this time we're going first our hand has Alber plus shadow dragon which is a spreadsheet combo and we also have super pulley and Maxi which is they're both pretty good in the mirror mat especially going first um the kit here is extra extension but because we have super Folly and Maxi we probably don't have the discard f for Kit um and the the alook plus shrouded line requires a discard for Rebellion anyway so I look at this hand I might think if we don't get hand trapped and our opponent's deck is playing 60 so there's a chance we don't get hand trapped at all this is just going to be a basic combo Alaba BL shred it so executing this gbo goes like this you add the High Spirits not branded Fusion and the reason you add High Spirits is because you want to chain you want to go shroud and chain High Spirit and the search is for cesia you going to send Titanic LA because you're going to get to albon anyway through the brand [Music] Fusion this makes gr Gro and then you send the S to p with the Shroud so now you can get that the Branded Fusion and from here it's a basic one card line go through Alon into the Bellion into mirade we discard the Saria because the aler has Ru in the graveyard as does shroud it and we discard the kit we don't want to get the strikes by it our board is going to be enough especially with this Nom engine I bring out branded l set and in the end phase we get a qu quum sends Alvis because we don't have an Alvis set up in the grave yet you think it I'll be on to set this is going to be banishment because our opponent's deck is 60 cards so it's either tier or red it could be something else but for the most part banishment is fine here because we're actually playing Dr stellia so there's there's no risk to uh setting banishment here now we get cesia back this is our discard for elz and then we pass to this is a pretty good Bard our opponent has a hand like this so they actually have quite a lot of bush they have a lot of extenders here so it's going to be quite an interesting game if they can place through this they start with a l of darkness and then need chain highper so here I realize what deck we're playing against it's the Branded deck um and it's it's the the Branda deck that you saw in the last example and they go for this condo where you go alert chain High Spirits so this is to search for shrouded I actually discard the golden sordo which I think is a little strange however in general going second it makes more sense even though the dragon discords are way better that's only for 10 one combo Titanic and and albian Titanic and albian are not going to do anything until the end phase and you need to be able to play a bit sooner than the end phase and this go does play sooner than the end phase so I think this is actually the the right choice they search from AA here especially considering that they don't have an exact line yet because they're going to draw two cuts and then they banish mcua and this gets to trigger full Clen and now start with quen you send a attrition that pair of the shrouded they can now get to branded Fusion we don't have duplication so we can't banish it and then here you see that they reveal Kido hot and some Rhino Hot the reason I'm not chaining Maxi is because I want to use maxi under a branded last window so what's on my mind here is that I probably have enough to win between the banishment the marriage Aid the super poly the elz um but this deck does have a lot of push there's always a chance that they do break my board and I actually really want my maxi to resolve so what I'm going to do is Maxi late give up on a few draws in order to guarantee that I get some draws at all so this end the hav is here and we still don't respond usually against tiar cards what we're going to do is let them resolve kit color and then banish with mirade but I actually have a better a better idea than this time which is to and use super poly I use super poly I let it resolve first so that I get a branded loss window it's very important that I get this because we're fusing away the kit colors with our grandol for stellia so the reason why this is the better play than using mer is because I want to get my maxi online as soon as possible so I want the Branded loss window um branded loss will also deny kit colors which is why this works it's the same thing as banishing it um but also putting jellia on the board is important because they're about to go branded Fusion as their followup and whatever they summon with branded Fusion is pretty pretty checked to be honest but Jang toell if they go Alon into lellan or Alon instead of lellan dellia stops it right no matter what it is they have to summon like sanctifier to beat dellia if they summon a render BR it's not bigger than dragonalia so we're we're still kind of checking it so that's why we wanted to get this card on board and we also now get our Maxi online as well not to mention that we get Mia which is something that you'd rather have sooner than waiting then now activate Sharon I decided this is not something I want to NE gate I want to get some draws for Mexi first the chain to add back the branet vision and the NOS were not good they didn't Mill anything this now triggers granino and we can summon B hinan so this is run K this is going to allow us to disrupt from the graveyard if they ever get another tier name into the graveyard we could potentially deny them roll col Us by stealing the kitas they now trigger their grand V and their golden s so now when they try to use C you I decide to banish reason I decide to banish is because it's going to force them into making something a little weird I decided to banish cesia but to be honest I think this was a m misplay I think it's reasonable to conclude that they have only one grand grol given that it's a hybrid deck between Tia and branded so what I think I should have done is just banish the Sharon because that was probably what they were trying to fuse with and they do they make masquerade using the kous this triggers the Sharon and they now get Volus we could have negated we could have used presan to steal the kit col however I didn't want to block my zone instead we could have banished it which could have been a play however I guess I just didn't decide to do that I don't I think it would have been a good fight looking back I think we should have banished the kit cols there's not likely to be a better use for priset in here however it doesn't really matter in the end the ru colus is not scary it doesn't threaten this board they acate branded fusion and they go for albian so this is now checked by the Dragon stellia this is the Propet card to Target with dellia because not only do you negate it but you also make it level one right the countes make it level one and that means you contribute it full Rebellion because Rebellion requires you to Tribute a level six or higher right so they contribute it's now stuck on the board they go lust for grass which would normally be a scary play but we're also on the card deck and they they only have five more cards than us not even that they have four more cards but they go for it anyway and they Mill four and they actually Mill albz plus the blacko wax which is pretty good it's pretty good Mill the albas doesn't really do much but the blackout is is reasonable considering they only M four cards we now try to steal that cortis but it wouldn't actually be stealing because this is not properly summed I this was summoned with gr grol so we would only be Vanishing this but they actually take the bait and they negate it with r colos this gets destroyed they trigger their Ros to reborn itself this now triggers out Ali oh can turn off the Masquerade now and we put it in attack position just because quam attacked over we're not too worried about dying here is there's almost no chance get outk they go battle B they crash into the marade which now triggers and they can't head over the aliver because you put it in attack position it could still attack with the other mostes but I'm not sure why they didn't they go Brandon and Brad we chain banishment so the reason we chain banishment is because we're afraid all the guardian Chimera f a chain saturnia tarting Al marade which was up a banishment Target this was going to be very strong clate where we going to get to um actually we didn't have much in the extra deck right cuz we don't have a drilia and we don't have cortis we don't have brini and either so this was not going to fuse this was just going to reborn marade but they deci toate it anyway with the sarer and we decide to negate their branded and red with the magn so this denies the guardian Kera I'm still drawing cards from Maxi which is just a guaranteed win now that we're in main Phase 2 I activate Ren Brom to fuse I want to summon elaz and fuse with their board and probably going to make um piece of this right make Furious Dragon but they decide to chain the black go laughs which actually stops El cuz they could elbows and then we can't use its effect they can actually to bring out rebellion and then they make alow lenses so by summoning our alas we actually fell for their bait I felt by forcing the black goat this will work we will get to resolve this but um in reality it was a it was a bait because this this card is able to clear the field now at least part of the field they get to revive B Al but fortunately it can't trigger because they don't have a Discord and they're also locked under the black Goat as well we revive kit because that lets us recycle cause like banishment they get to rebuild a board here but it doesn't mean anything because we've triggered mirade so I'm Not Afraid of Anything on their board they set opening in the end phase we get to add back our cards and then the whole board dies to marade alha latas triggers for Fusion deployment but at this point it's straightforward we have a million cant hand it's pretty easy to [Music] otk so now what I want to do is spend a little bit of time talking about building a side deck in branded this video is about branded in mastle and madle doesn't typically have a side deck so I want spend too much time on this but there are Community tournaments that do have side decks and even in official Challenger cups kind of have side decks too and there's also always a chance that you watching this for the TCG as well the first thing to realize about a side deck for Branded is that it's an opportunity to really lean into the value of those high impact non-engine cards high impact cards that are like silver bullets for certain matchups are common for side decks in general however for branded specifically this is extra helpful as the deck prefers its non-engine to be high impact when possible you can side CS like droll neiru darkg roller and evenly pretty comfortably knowing that you're going to get to play them only in the matchups where they are good this fits neatly into your game plan of drawing just one to two non-engine cuts if you're not main decking Ash then side decking it for matchet SW is a highend p cut like lapr and F the mirror match is a pretty good option although it's important to respect the popularity of those decks as well if they aren't being played very much then it's probably still not worth sighting Ash just for that something else you can do with Ash isci it as an option for going first so that you have an extra out to Max seat another good cut side of branded is red reboot not only is this going to be the best out to trap decks like Labyrinth and stum but is also going to be a counter against any Decks that are siding in dimensional barrier for going first this can be any deck in the game so in general you could choose the side in reboot every time the game two and three if you know that you're going to be going sick I don't think this is a bad idea although I personally don't side in red reboot against Decks that are not trap decks I think it's too unreliable as your opponent might not have drawn the D barrier which makes that red reboot likely to be useless there's also the problem of not being able to otk all the time in branded which means that red reboot ends up helping your opponent as they will get to reuse the Trap card that you negated plus an extra one from the deck for free speaking of dimensional barrier you can also side dimensional barrier yourself for going first this is a good option when D barrier is good in the format you can even side just one as a t for thrust if you like but there is nothing wrong with setting all three for when you go first you can even side up to six copies of it if you want in the form of trap trick another good side C for going first is additional copies of fusion dupc location hard drawing this card is really good when you're going first so why limit yourself to having just one as a Thrust Target if you play multiple duplication you can even set it with trap trick as well something else I like to do a lot with my side deck is side engine cards for when I'm going first branded doesn't need any non-engine really at all to back up its boards in order to win so if you side more engine for going first you're only increasing your chances of winning since you're going to have less chance of pricking and more ability to push their hand drops the best engine decide for going first is probably then the ds7 package this is what makes them most sense since the deer is way better at going first than it is going second so you can side then a deer package and in main deck all the other engine Cuts siding Thea instead of Ming it also lets you have better control over what match ups you side Maximus into that way you're never going to accidentally use Maximus against a deck like vo this voice or Labyrinth or Tia or anything else that has targets for it you could also asde a sanctifier a Floodgate just for going first if you want to although I personally think that you should main deck of flip gate if you want to play one at all so that you have the option of using it in game one force targets are something you can consider for a side deck I mentioned deep area already but it could also be board Breakers as well things like where geki dusta evenly matched or even one nich options like Soul release and you can play these as one-ups since you're intending to search them with thrust extra best deals is something you can side especially during formats where best deals are good against a popular matchup and spell trap removal like lightning storm and Cosmic Cyclone is also generically good too overall when it comes to building a side deck it's important to remember that you need to have cards decide out of your deck not just cards decide in normally you want to swap non-engine cards for other non-eng engine cards and only occasionally will you actually side out engine when you're going first and you want to put in extra engine cards you're probably taking out non-engine cards in particularly Max C Maxi something that is surprisingly bad when you're going first you don't need it to make your endb strong enough and since it doesn't disrupt your opponent by itself it doesn't actually do anything to prevent them from decaying a lot of opponents will play into Maxi against branded with the intention about decaying you because they believe it's likely that you're not playing many of a hand traps to draw into so Mexi is typically something that you will side out for going first this is an example of a side deck you might play for Branded and it goes along with this main deck and you can see that it uses a lot of the ideas that I just mentioned is droll neiru and evenly as high impact Silver Bullet cards for going second and there's some going first cards in the form of D barrier and then there's also then a DS servant package which is an example of siding engine this deist is from a format where tempai and ritual Beast are really good so that's why de barrier is the going first card of choice it might look like the side deck is super simple with just three copies of everything but it's actually only able to be like that because the main deck allows it to for going first this list can site out the gamma package magnut and two copies of Maxi as they're all not that good for going first the reason you want to keep one copy of Maxi in the deck is so that you can still mate it with Crosset this is a total of six cards so you can side in the three card nadilla package and then also all three dimensional barrier if they're appropriate for that match up if the D barriers aren't appropriate for the matchup you can still put in draw Nibiru if they are good in the match up and remember that Nibiru is pretty good for going first in branded specific for going second you have the option of setting out super poly or gamma if they're not good enough in the matchup and replacing them with evenly droll or niru if appropriate and you can also consider siding out Ash as it's not always the most effective handra to go in second but anyway that's it for the side deck like I said I won't go into too much detail since side decks aren't really a thing for masteral and I've also already mentioned a lot of the other ideas with side decking here and there throughout the video okay so now what I want to do is briefly go over all of these other cars that you could theoretically play and branded these are all examples of exotic Tech choices that you can technically play and branded some of them are really here just for historical reference and some of them are actually playable now for specific nich uses some of these are also just generically good in theory but don't really have a place right now and they could potentially be good in the future nightmare Throne is so that you can play a small ubell engine that allows you to set up Phantom of ell before making any of your other plays it's where you can have a mol in the gate for hand trap most notably Ash blosom on your branded Fusion you would play three Throne one spirit and one OG Bell as well as one Phantom in the extra deck it's a lot of bricks for just three good cards and it's also an extra card in the extra deck although going first with Throne is very powerful so this is not actually that much of a gimmick if you draw one of the Ells you can even sometimes send the other one from your deck to the graveyard with gr grol allowing you to make phantom without drawing the nightmare from aod dolphing is a funny tech for going first since Echo NEOS exists you can actually summon dolphin with deployment allowing you to look at your opponent's hand before going for any of your other plays this is another way of beating Ash and getting information about your opponent's hand I think this is underrated to be honest however it isn't actually as good as it sounds since you usually want to use deployment for your actual engine most of the time snow is something that some people play in 60 card versions of branded and even TI ass played this at Worlds it's a good payoff for grass and you can also use this as material for albon or sanctifier with Fusion allowing you to get better value when you already have your main targets like L Bellion in rotation Outlet is a good counter to stun deck you can search this by sending it to the graveyard with branded Fusion grass or even grino and then adding it back to your hand with its own effect this can help with otks and getting bad spells of traps out of your hand into the graveyard but for the most part this card's best uses as a recurring searchable out to floodgates so it's pretty good in the stun match up there's some shidel here like Dragon Beast Ariel and squamata these are also grass payoffs and they can also be good in a doel hybrid version of branded as well Dragon specifically is sometimes cited as a form of back her removal that you can access with branded fusion and these also all work as additional targets for app colog as well if you are playing a shidel hybrid version of branded Shadel Fusion is very good and to be honest Shadel Fusion is a really good card to play in any version of branded specifically for going second it's a bit too heavy of a package to side since she would need to also side the shidol monsters themselves but if it resolves going second it can lead to a really really powerful push Ariel for example is crazy strong against fireex since it just banishes things like garunix princess and Oz as soon as it hits the graveyard nef shal genius is more of a historic card than anything else this card was played sometimes as an out to X pearly Noir during formats where py was the best deck this car prevented either player from using Noah's effects which allowed you to then attack over it with something like starving Venom how of the Abyss is another historical card was this was released it was the best way of Ting Noir since it was searchable with thrust and didn't require you to play any bricks that being said this was still often kind of unreliable since you still have to draw either this or the thrust and if you didn't then you had no way of outing the no if youron it was smart Shadow mist and plasma were one of the other options that I tried as a means of outing no the idea was that you would send Shadow Mist to the graveyard with branded fusion and it would then search for plasma once plasma hit the board it would negate no as effects and the plasma itself could also suck up the no water out it as well I liked this method a lot since it was searchable and plasma would always win you the game from that position since ply actually had no way of playing under its Floodgate another thing I tried for atting a while was which of the black forest or sangen alongside Doan or Santa Claus the idea was that by playing sandwich in the extra deck you could summon witch or sangen with deployment which then searches for the Kaiju or the Santa Claus when sent to the Grave dead this is very much a gimmick but I did pull it off once at a challenger cup which was very satisfying you can even search for Fusion deployment with alal lenitas so this was technically a fully searchable out to Noir hor parts are playable and branded you go first with these it can be an easy way of getting bats po some traps out of your hand and also getting multiple bodies into the bo to make ver going second the Horus card will allow you to easily Ed K which helps to counteract the fact that Brandon sometimes struggles with it I've seen blind second build of branded that use the Horus package and the shal package as well it's something worth considering for challenge of cups or if you're expecting to play a blind second build against tempai RI and dark C are also in line with this blind second game plan you can play multiples of these in a blind second deck list but you can also just play one as a rust tet as well book of eclipse is an interesting card in branded this is probably the most sensible card in this whole list to be honest as a lot of good branded decks actually play this and for good reason this card can be a board breaker against certain decks while also not being useless going first one cute way of using eclipse is to dodge things like imper and veiler on your anal you can also sometimes order your end phase lingering effects in a way so that you destroy your opponent's monsters with a mirror J trick at first before resolving Eclipse to flip up and let your opponent draw roll back is interesting and branded a coolest way to use this is to Mill it with grass going second alongside a copy of evenly matched from there you can go to the battle phase and banish your opponent's entire field by copying evenly with roll back roll back also has the ability to Target branded King and branded banishment but weirdly enough it actually can't Target Fusion duplication despite the fact that all of the judges I've asked say that this should be a legal play in a TCG and the ocg so I think it is just a bug in m at all currently panon is a trap but you can play for going first against de like cash and there also a possible roll back Target or a trap chck Target and this can be a way of adding big unaffected monsters like the raid rep toats cash dards are part of an interesting boat of branded that looks something like this it also uses kaisa glider golden burst and the whole point of this list is to prioritize making berte rather than actually resolving branded Fusion kais glater allows you to dodge imper and baa on your Verte or your ala this build was genuinely pretty good and under explode in my opinion although once brand had got all of its support cards this build became kind of unnecessarily Weak by comparison invoke is technically Fusion support and therefore could be playable and branded meltdown is like three extra copies of branded lost and using Morgan you could have two normal summons which branded actually appreciates quite a lot there's even new Eng vote support coming out in the ocg so who knows that could potentially be some hybrid build one day you could even play Divina in a build like this as a consent tragedy which can end search for alibra diablosis is a CO gr all talk it I actually played this in one of my ranked client videos this card lets you have a stronger turnone one by taking a card out of your opponent's hand for free and it trigger to summon itself from the graveyard when you tribute albian for the summoning condition of gilion extra folage barrial is technically able to trigger some albas fusion effects and foolish barel Goods is just generally okay in branded anyway the only reason you don't play Goods in standard branded is because it's not strong enough as a standal LM card but the effect itself is always going to be useful Fusion Destiny is playable since it doesn't care about brandit Fusion locks and then the AES of cards are also not unplayable in branded either I actually made a video a while ago about isisu branded where the isisu cards worked pretty well alongside Herald of the orange light which took advantage of the fact that desp most disable fairies there's also SP and Typhon here because they are generally useful tools to have in your extra Deck the fusion lock that branded has is not actually applying that often after your first time since you're not likely to be resolving Fusion deployment again and you can easily avoid going for Branded Fusion again if you really want to avoid being locked instead the only reason why SP and tyon are not playable in branded is just because there's no room in the Acra deck overall though as good as I might have made some of these cards sound they're all pretty gimmicky except for Book of eclipse book of eclipse is pretty good um and at the end of the day feel free to experiment with these but be aware that they are probably not optimal all right so now for the final piece of theory for standard branded I want to go over in detail how exactly the end phase Works in mastero and how branded specifically can take advantage of these mechanics as always I'm going to go over the basics so if you're new at the Branded this section will try to give you an intuitive way of understanding the end phase so that it makes sense in 99% of your games that being said it turns out there's a lot of hidden detail to the end phase which you probably didn't know about even if you're a branded expert so be prepared to be confused so to start with the absolute basics of the end phase General the only effects you can activate during the end phase are quick effects trigger effects and counter traps as well as times trigger effects like albon and Titanic you can also resolve lingering effects or continuous conditions like mirade magut SP of night and SP Resorts as usual like in any phase of the game quick effects can be chained in response to any activation or on the resolution of an effect the only effects that can't be used in the end phase are spell speed one effect like normal spell cards or ignition effects the only exception to this is timed trigger effects like albon and Titanic L which are spell speed one effects but are allowed to be used in the end phase anyway because they are specifically tyed trigger effects you can tell something is a Time defect because it will have this time assemble next to its effect in the menu in madle specifically there are two Gain settings that will affect how the in phase is going to appear to function and they are the activation order setting and the toggle setting obviously any remotely experienced player is going to be using manual activation order but the toggle setting is something that you are constantly going to be switching between in order to fully use and understand the mechanics of the end phase you will need to be toggled on so for the rest of this section I'll be explaining the end phase from that perspective branded specifically cares a lot about the end phase since so many of its effects can only be used there braded commonly plays albon Titanic clad cesia High Spirits Sprint and elol lenus all of which have optional Ed trigger effects during the end phase there's also Mir Jades trigger effect which applies a lingering effect to destroy your opponent's field during the end phase once Mir Jad tricker has been activated applying the destruction during the end phase is mandatory meaning you cannot now choose not to do it and this is the same for Magnus lingering effect as well once you've activated magnate on the field you then have to resolve the such effect at some point during the end phase when you have multiple times trigger effects available in the end phase instead of chaining to each other like regular trigger effects they will instead activate one at a time since these time trigger effects are all spelled Beed one so you can never chain one to another if your opponent also has their own time trigger effects again there will be no chains instead every single time trigger effect will activate on its own separate chain during an open game State another important thing to read realize is that it's important to know who the turn player is the turn player is always going to have priority to activate any of their end phase effects first just like how they do in the main phase this means that if both players have time trigger effects in the end phase the turn player is always going to get a chance to activate one of these effects first before they Peron and this priority even applies to Quick effects as well the turn play has priority to activate a spell speed One Time's trigger effect like albon before their opponent can even use a quick effect like Maxi additionally after resolving one of these time trigger effects and returning to an open game State the turn player has priority again to use another one of the timed trigger effects in fact if the turn player wants to they have priority to use all of their time trigger effects first and all of their timed lingering effects and continuous effects before the opponent can use any of theirs one thing that I want to make clear though is that this priority only applies to the spell speed one times trigger effects as I mentioned earlier just like in any other phase the rules for quick effects still follow the regular quick effect rules which means to put it simply that quick effects can be used in response to or in the resolution of any effect this quick effect timing blow chot accurately describes how quick effects interact here at the end phase so take a look at this if you're not sure if you choose not to use your ter play priority during the end phase and instead you activate nothing then your opponent is going to have a chance to use their effects this will be their first opportunity to use any effect at all whether it's a Time trigger effect like the own albon or a regular quick effect like wealth and Labyrinth if your opponent chooses to activate an effect here then once an open gain state has been reached you're going to have another opportunity to activate one of your time trigger effects what this means is that you can sometimes catch your opponent off guard by passing your initial priority to them which baits them into using an effect for example if we have Titanic Le and our opponent has a back row which we know is welcome Labyrinth since they set it with a Furniture during their first time but we enter the end phase since we are the turn player we have priority to activate Titanic Le before the opponent has a chance to use the welcome we could use the Titanic lead and summon quen however if we pass on the initial priority our opponent now has the chance to use the welcome Labyrinth now if they use it we get better value from the Titanic lad as we can also summon albad and fuse with that Labyrinth monster another example of this is with sp sp little Knight if our opponent banishes SP little Knight for its effect they will be prompted to return the must as it banishes to the field during the end phase as a spell speed one resolution of a lingering effect by passing on the initial priority in our end phase we can bait our opponent into choosing to use the SP resolving it and bringing their MERS back to the board that way we can then use Titanic clad afterwards to summon alz and Fus with the monster that they returned you can also do the same thing with mir's lingering effect in that situation where you're trying to bait your opponent into resolving SP you can pass priority on your marage a once so that your opponent might return the SP and then you can destroy with maraging in reality all of these examples are just tricks since our opponent could have just passed pyic back which would have forers to then decide between using the Titanic lead right there or not at all because of priority the opponents of the 10 player can always choose to resolve any and all of their effects after any and all of the effects of the turn players that being said not everybody knows this so in practice you will catch people off guard with this the examples I mentioned earlier are actually pretty realistic this is pretty much all you need to know to have a basic understanding of the end phase and how you can use it to your advantage in branded however there's actually a bunch of extra complications that I want to mention just for the sake of being thorough this flowchart from an old Yu-Gi-Oh Forum Maps outed basic rule set for how the end phase specifically should work for most cases this flowchart will be sufficient however this is actually inaccurate specifically with this part here according to this flowchart if both players pass priority after doing nothing then the turn player will be forced to resolve a mandatory effect in reality though what happens when both players press priority after doing nothing is that the player gets another opportunity to use one of their optional timed triggers however this is where things get kind of weird instead of the temp player having another opportunity to use any of their optional times triggers they instead get offered a pople asking if they want to activate one of their optional timed triggers like this from here if you ever see this message it means it's your last chance to use that effect this turn you no longer have the ability of using one of your other time defects first you now have have to resolve this one first or not at all if you press no to this popup you will return to an open game state where you will be able to activate any of your optional time triggers except for the one that you were just asked about and this cycle actually repeats if you decline to use any effects here again the game will pop up with a message asking you to use another one of your effects where if you decline this individual pop-up window that effect will be removed from your available pool of optional Ed trigger effects this will happen until you've depleted all of your available optional effects at which point any mandatory effects that you have will activate and any mandatory resolutions of lingering effects that you have will resolve if your opponent is toggled on then they will get an opportunity to use an effec of their own after each time you decline to use an optional time effect from your available pool once you've used all of your optional and mandatory effects the same process will start applying to your opponent They will receive popup m mes asking to resolve one effect at a time followed by it being removed from the available pool if they declaim at any point during this process if either player chooses to actually use an effect rather than just passing priority then the whole cycle is actually broken and both players return to having all options available to them on the next open game state with the exception of any effects that the player previously declined on a individual popup window this all sounds really weird and it makes sense that it wouldn't ever come up in a real game since there's kind of no reason why both players would want to refuse all of the end phase effects like this however it is still interesting to me that it happens at all here is a demonstration of this process happening the way the game chooses what order to ask your optional effects in is actually determined by their card ID value the earliest card ID will be asked first followed by the later ones card ID is decided mainly by release order and in the cases where cards are released at the same time extra Deck monsters will take priority followed by main deck monsters followed by spells followed by traps and I actually figured this out by testing it so if I did make a mistake it's probably due to a lack of testing this is the card ID order for the develop and branded cards and this is a better flowchart that I made which describes the weird and phase behavior in practice this is not something you'll ever need to think about however I personally just find it really interesting that that somehow even if it's just theoretically the release order of cards technically affects the optimal play in game so I'm not actually sure whether this is intentional or a book however this is how it's worked for a while so who knows if it will ever be changed the only other thing on this flowchart that I haven't mentioned yet is the hand size check at the end here's another flow chart that I made which describes the behavior of the hand size check in the end phase something to keep in mind is that the individual pop-up windows will still show up even if your toggle is set to off this can be important to know so that you don't time out during the end phase of an intense turn you will probably need a couple seconds at least to decline all of the individual popups so be prepared for that to happen in the end phase and don't ever let yourself get below that one or two seconds that you might need for this when it comes to the card ID list by the way you might notice that Ecclesia being on this list is a little weird since if you read aesus effect it is clearly a mandatory effect so it shouldn't be possible for it to be removed from your pool of activatable effects if you decline it since it should be mandatory however this is actually not what happens for some reason ecclesius effect is optional in madol even though it is supposed to be mandatory this is clearly a bug maybe it's a translation issue so it might also be fixed sometime in the future anyway that's it for the N phas section and that's also everything for the standard branded theory in general so yeah I hope you enjoyed so we've now finally reached the end of the video I hope you found this video to be a useful guide for Branded and I want to thank you so much for watching it whether you watch the whole thing or just some small pieces of it I hope you found the information that you were looking for I've been asked many times to make an informative video about branded so it makes me happy to finally be able to share all of my insights with the community this video took me so long to make and I really tried to put my heart and soul into making it as good as possible so I'd really appreciate it if you could like the video and subscribe if you haven't already done so also remember that there is a link to the combo spreadsheet available in the description it's completely free and I didn't really feel like putting any of the content for this video behind a pay wall however if you do want a way of showing some extra appreciation there is also a Link in the description to my Kofi donations as well the last thing I want to say is that I understand this video is not quite what you'd expect from the average Master little guide and as a result it might not be for everyone that being said I wanted to make this my own personal creation anyway and in my own personal way it's a combination of my passion for making videos and my passion for competitive you thanks again for watching sh for [Music] [Music] for for for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] sh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]