Notes & Combos

Pain. Suffering. Madolche gotta be the most unplayable dogshit deck in 2026 Duel Links, I swear. This climb felt like it had to at least be comparable to being subjected to chinese water torture. Took 50 wins, so probably like ~85 games. Can't believe a DLv. MAX took that long. I'll talk about the decklist only briefly this time because this run was almost entirely motivated by wanting to rant, complain and crash out about the absolute state of Madolche in DL. I'm probably qualified enough for that much at this point, and hope it at least makes for an entertaining read.

First, I'm running Lesson because it's somehow our best Trap card, and this meta happens to be one where the stat buff can actually save our a**. Somewhat useful going first, and can send it with Area Zero going second too. Could be worse. Seventh Tachyon is in this deck because it can place Spells, as well as place Pudding and the like without instantly losing, unlike Small World. Also TY-PHON didn't do all that much, he ain't mandatory.

Anyway, gotta talk about the elephant in the room first, WHERE THE F*** IS ANJELLY? We got our Xyz Monsters 3 years ago, and it was always strange that she wasn't released as well. Cut to now and we're getting near entire archetypes released at once, think Ancient Gear, Traptrix, Shinobird, and many others, with phenomenal skills to boot. All the while I've had to keep making the same "Anjelly's still too strong" joke.

It's not just her though, if you look at the 6 missing Madolche cards you may notice that nearly all of them are endboard pieces. The only card we can make for an "endboard" is Glass whose GY disruption does sweet f*** all against nearly every deck in the game. Sistart also doesn't help much since she's so easy to OTK over without Chateau AND Lesson, and yet it and Nights still don't help either, thanks to the fact that to even have follow-up we MUST get either Chateau or Ticket, and can't just search a Trap without playing more bricks or some dogshit skill to proc Messen twice. Seeing the coinflip land first might as well be equivalent to taking 5000 counts of psychic damage.

The only thing Madolche can do well is deal a ton of damage going second, enough to punch through even Kiteroid. But that comes with the caveat of outright losing to being looked at funny. That's why the Striker cards are so closely tied to Madolche's ability to perform in DL whatsoever, cuz if you don't remove EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION the opponent has, you can't even ATTEMPT to play. And that's not even addressing handtraps; any Veiler, Imperm, Crow, Belle, Mourner, Nibiru or even Droll on anything is just an instant scoop.

Hey, Madolche is pretty well known for having strong 1 card combos, right? Not in DL! Magileine is our only card that can 1CC into Tiara, a problem entirely caused by the lack of Anjelly. Love breaking nearly a whole board just to still lose because a Peting 1CC ends on a bunch of stupid vanillas that can't beat a single 3000 DEF a**hole. And don't even get me started on TOWERS! We can't even kill through an Eagle Booster'd Shizuku, letalone a whole Spiral Galaxy or Punisher. And all of this is assuming that you actually FIND a starter, since it's only Mag, Peting and the "everything searchers". But don't find more than one, or the several garnets, or you won't have enough breakers! Just draw perfectly, every time, with no consistency skill :)

I haven't even addressed Madolche's most infamous issue, being the inability to splash it with nearly anything monster related. Peting NEEDS to be Special Summoned and NEEDS to resolve, and that will also Madolche lock you. So not only are other monster-based archetypes effectively unusable, but if you use any handtrap not named Imperm, it'll offer you the sweet additional effect of killing you. Of course there does happen to be a starter not named Hootcake that can help mitigate this issue... what am I saying, thats far too strong for Duel Links lmao

This climb legitimately took so long and was so harsh that I had to start switching on and off of B.E.S. just so I wouldn't be constantly stuck in rank-down h***. Super competent deck by the way, would recommend. Probably cheaper to build than Madolche too. I also managed to forget to save any good DLv. 19 replays, but honestly there really wasn't anything to miss. Every Madolche win looks the same; either you somehow survive the opponent's turn and win, or go second and nuke everything. And no handtraps, ever. To fill out the list a bit I threw in a funny one from when the football event was around since I was never able to post that.

Honestly, I'm probably, finally, at my limit with playing Madolche in this game. At least until an actual game changer drops; I'll be back with quickness in that case. It's always been cool being the only one still trying to play this archetype, but the power gap is just too wide at this point. I really don't think I can come up with any more innovations to still somehow manage to win.

Slight futureproof, the only non-Madolche (and non-Vernusylph) card I can think of that'll prob release later that would make a nice addition to the deck is Seventh Ascension. Not a game changer, but it's something. All in all, huge shoutouts to Striker cards for carrying Madolche for so long, still crazy that Defying Fate was the best buff Madolche recieved in these past 3 years. Certainly better than Sistart being shadowdropped a year after the Xyz to absolutely zero fanfare.

Anyway, I need to rest. Next post will prob be something B.E.S. related, whenever that happens to be. At least the funny boss ships can actually win versus just about any other competent deck, no strings attached.