Play Yu-Gi-Oh! against an AI that plays real decks

What the AI does

The opponent is called the Rival. Each Rival deck is a fixed, published decklist, and the AI plays it the way the deck is meant to be played.

• Going first, it combos. Its opening turns are the deck's real combo lines, checked move by move on the rules engine, and it ends on the boards the deck is built to make.
• When you interrupt, it adapts. A hand trap on one of its steps doesn't end its turn: it switches to a follow-up line, or plans a new one from the board in front of it.
• On your turn, it holds hand traps. Every Rival deck runs them, and the AI chooses when to use them.
• It can't make an illegal move. Every option it chooses from is one the rules engine offers. The engine is ygopro-core, the open-source core EDOPro runs on, with Project Ignis's card scripts.

The AI plays its own decks, not yours. You bring your deck: build it in the app, or import a .ydk file, a ydke:// link or a pasted list.

Why practice against an opponent

Goldfishing, playing your deck with no opponent, tells you whether your combos work. It doesn't tell you what happens when they meet a hand trap, and most games are decided there. A matchup has two questions goldfishing can't answer:

• Going first: which of your steps does their hand trap stop, and what is your best board after it?
• Going second: what does their board do to you, and which of your cards get through it?

The usual answer is a testing partner who plays the other deck, plays it well, and has the time. The Rival is that partner for the decks it plays, whenever you want a game.

A practice routine

A routine that moves from your own combos to the matchup:

1. Learn your combo alone. In Solo you choose your opening hand and play it against an opponent that never responds.Solo is for knowing the line. Nothing interrupts you there.
2. Learn where it breaks. In Combos, record your turn on the board, then interrupt it with the hand trap you expect, at the step you expect. Each interruption is saved as its own branch, and Practice plays it back until you get through it.
3. Play the matchup going first. Choose the Rival deck and First. Note which hand trap stopped you, and on which step.Restart during the first two turns if the opening was not the one you meant to practice.
4. Then going second. Choose Second, and learn the board you have to break: which piece negates what, and in what order to make your plays.
5. Keep a short log. For each game: who went first, the card that decided it, and how close it was.

A few games teach you lines. They don't measure a matchup: with 20 games, a deck that truly wins half of them will show anything from about 30% to 70%. Count the games you could have won, not only the wins.

The Rival decks

Each deck's page has its combos, the hand traps it plays, where to interrupt it, and its full list.

Previous banlist

Other ways to play Yu-Gi-Oh! against a computer

Each is good at something else: Duelingbook and Dueling Nexus at playing people, EDOPro at playing offline with every card, Master Duel at Konami's own ranked play. The comparisons go into each:

• YGO Lab and Duelingbook
• YGO Lab and Dueling Nexus
• YGO Lab and EDOPro
• YGO Lab and Master Duel

Questions