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What happens when you run out of cards in Yugioh!? Well, you deck out! If you cannot draw any cards, you lose the game. This is one of the conditions for Yguoh! Rather than a win condition, this is a loss condition. If a player has no more cards in their deck, they cannot draw any cards. And if you have no cards to draw, you lose. Now, this rarely comes up in modern play, but in the past, there have been entire strategies and decks built with the sole purpose of forcing your opponent to deck out. Let’s take a look!
COnditions
A deck out occurs when a player has to draw a card, but they have no cards left in their Main Deck to draw. This is an automatic and instant loss for the round. A deck out often happens during a player’s Draw Phase when they have no cards left to draw, but it can also happen if a card effect that includes a draw is activated and that player cannot draw. However, a deck out does not occur if a player’s Main Deck is empty and a card effect is activated that includes excavating, reveal, add, look, banish, or send is used. Those conditions simply cannot be met, and the effects cannot resolve. A deck out only occurs when card draw cannot be performed.
Strategies
Some decks and builds take advantage of the deck out condition. There is a whole strategy based on forcing your opponent to deck out. These decks are often called mill decks, or use a mill strategy. These decks are designed to mill the player’s deck by either sending cards from the deck to the GY, or by forcing players to draw cards. While there are many different ways to approach the mill strategy, some decks are better at it than others. Two of the most popular decks used for decking out your opponent are Runick and Jar. Sometimes Exodia builds can use a mill strategy, too, but those are often not as effective.
Now, it also worth noting that mill strategies are not always aimed at achieving a deck out. Decks like Laval or Sylvan are great at milling your own cards, but these decks are not designed to deck out. These decks prefer milling your own deck to activate card effects or set up your board.
Cards
The Runick archetype uses a ton of cards that banish cards from your opponent’s deck as part of their strategy, as well milling your own deck. Look at cards like Runick Allure, Runick Destruction, and Freki the Runick Fangs. However, older decks loved using the Jar monsters for decking out the opponent. Morphing Jar and Morphing Jar #2 both have effects that force players to either mill cards from their decks, or draw several cards from their deck. And, combining the Jar monsters with cards like Book of Moon and Book of Taiyou allow you to proctot the Jars’ effects more than once per turn. This is often called the “Empty Jar” strategy. Other popular deck out cards over time have included Needle Worm, Warm Worm, Cup of Ace, Card Destruction, The Gift of Greed, Side Effects?, Present Card, Trickstar Reincarnation, Soul Levy.
