Six Samurai Guide

Published on May 25th, 2018 by

General Overview

Since its announcement that Six Samurai were coming to Duel Links, the community immediately got excited. They were one of the most fast paced and interesting archetypes in the TCG and having access to them in Duel Links was something we were all looking forward to. Flash forward to now, we have a few variants of Six Samurai that we have access to, some with more success than others. I'll be addressing some cards released in Crusaders' Battlegrounds that revived competitive Six Samurais and could potentially push them onto the tier list.

Things to note before continuing with Six Samurais:

Most Six Samurai effects can only work when there's another Six Samurai on your side of the field. This is a KEY POINT which this whole guide revolves around. If you can keep your Six Samurai’s alive, you can work towards winning the game.
If a Six Samurai monster would be destroyed (by battle, effect etc.), you can choose to destroy ANOTHER Six Samurai monster instead of it. Pick and choose which Six Samurais are useful in match-ups and let others die to prepare for Loading... . With the new Six Samurai released in Crusaders' Battlegrounds, we rarely run any copies of Loading... /Loading... /Loading... , so this point isn’t that relevant. However, it's good to remember that Loading... can also be protected via sacrificing a Six Samurai in its place.

Without further ado, let us begin!

About the Author

I played the TCG competitively from 2007 - 2012 winning many local tournaments and have an extensive knowledge about the cards from that era. I started playing Duel Links in November of 2017 and have achieved King of Games every single month since then.

Skill Analysis

There are a few skills that really stick out to us Six Samurai players. The key ones we will be focusing on are:

Restart :
Allows for us to refresh our hand looking for a more favourable outcome. You’ll be wanting to reset your hand depending on matchups which will be discussed further. Ideally you’d be wanting one Six Samurai monster depending on the matchup + Loading... to get the deck popping. If you can have 1-2 backrow to protect/revive your Six Samurai, that would be an “ideal” opening hand.
Fields of the Warriors :
All the Six Samurai cards are Warrior type and don’t boast the greatest stats. Field of the Warriors helps assist in that department by offering a slight boost to our beloved Samurais. However, if you do take Field of Warriors, you’ll be lacking the consistency offered by Restart/Balance so i don’t recommend taking this option.
Loading... :
This skill could see some use, however in a more control oriented variant of the Six Samurai deck. If the meta were to slow down substantially, this could see some play. However, as of now, it is quite useless.
Balance :
A balance list could see some relevance alongside the control variant of Six Samurais, but again, I don’t believe the control variant is fast enough to keep up with the current meta in Duel Links.
Loading... :
Another skill which gives us an extra card in hand to set up for OTK’s. Six Samurai can get away with this skill due to having many ways of dealing with your opponent's card advantage when they also get an extra card in hand. If you take this skill, you’ll be looking to go second and have the tools in your deck to wipe backrow (Loading... , Loading... , etc) and deal with a monster (Enemy Controller, Hand of the Six Samurai) and finish them off with Great Shogun Shien + Grandmaster of the Six Samurai. A fun skill to use and one which should be taken quite seriously.