Table of Contents
Introduction & History
Spellbooks is an archetype that was released on May 1st in the Mini Box - Visions of Ice. The deck is a combo-oriented control based deck that revolves around using Loading... to disrupt your opponent's plays each turn and minimizing their resources. The metagame is currently heavily populated by Sylvans. This deck has the advantage of having an excellent Sylvan matchup thanks to the ability of Loading... enabling you to banish your opponent’s cards each turn. This helps prevent Loading... from causing problems when flipped.
About the Author
Hi there, I’m Machdragon, a competitive Canadian Duel Links player and currently a member of the Top Player Council at Duel Links Meta. I test pretty much every deck to find out their strengths and weaknesses as well as how to best build each deck for different formats. My favourite decks of all time are REZD and Hazy. Although this deck is very powerful against current meta decks, I have noticed many players are not playing Spellbooks possibly due to the high skill cap of the deck and complicated combos. This deck falls under a similar category as Ninjas during the Nov 2017 KC Cup, as a powerful deck with many different options and combo paths depending on opening hands and your opponent’s set up. As this is also a difficult deck to play well, it has turned away many players, who would like to just pick the deck up and give it a try. Hopefully, you will be able to take away some useful tips about how to play this deck and against it. The combos in this deck are a bit difficult to master especially when being rushed by the timer, but I hope this guide will help you learn to execute them perfectly. This guide was written with some help from Negative1 for the template + Jonesy9027 for helping me a bunch along the way to bring this guide to the website and help people who are curious about the deck learn how it works. I hope you all find it helpful! :D
Decklist Breakdown
Grit Spellbooks vs Grass Spellbooks
30 Grass Books (Grass Books) with Restart
vs 20-24 card Grit Spellbooks (Grit Books) with Grit
Many people are curious as to which version of the deck is better. Both versions have their advantages and disadvantages.
Generally, Grass Books will be better on the ranked ladder or in the KC Cup due to the raw power that an activation of Loading... can give you. This loads up your grave with resources and gives you a huge advantage over your opponent.
Grass Spellbooks run 30 cards and Restart which gives around a 62.07% chance going first with 4 cards and a 67.24% to draw it going second in 5 cards.
Grit Spellbooks have the advantage to be able to utilize their side deck better, as the lower card count will give a higher probability of drawing into side deck cards, during a match in games 2 and 3.
Grit Spellbooks are also able to potentially survive a One Turn Kill thanks to their skill. This greatly improves their matchup against Masked Heroes. However, not running Restart may also increase the chances of bricking with an unplayable hand.
Conclusion: The 30 card Grass Variant is better as long as you are able to resolve grass and load up your grave with resources. The extra books in grave allow you to set up plays with Fate and resolve the Fool combo.
Monster Cards
Note: The monsters we use, and optimal counts will vary significantly based on the current meta. The current guide was written for May 2018. We will go in depth on how to use these cards in combo sections.