1st Lesson

Alright this will be the first lesson, sorry it took so long for me to get this posted, but some things in my life have prevented me from getting this posted when I had originally planned to. So without further ado the first lesson is over deck building. This very core idea is very important to the game of yu-gi-oh as if you can't build a good deck then no matter how good you get at playing the game or how lucky you are you will no doubt have problems as you play against stronger and stronger opponents.

While these rules aren't concrete they are things I've found have helped me keep my decks fairly balanced and running good, I'd like to point out now however that all of these can be broken but be sure you have a good reason for breaking them as they keep decks running smooth.

1)Run about 20 monster and 20 S/T: This is to prevent getting to many s/t or too many monsters though it can still happen
2)Run 2 monsters you can summon without any stipulation for every monster that needs a stipulation(including sacrificing). This keeps you from getting a hand that stops you from playing any monsters.
3)Run 4 cards at least for defence, this is quite explanatory though the cards don't have to be things that stop attacks. In most decks it's normally things like solemn judgement, Bottomless Trap Hole, and mirror force while not cards for attacking defence they defend against big plays I can see my opponent is going to go into.
4)Run the staples in the game. They are staples for a reason either they help you or they hurt the opponent so either way they give you an advantage which is why they are staples.
5)Keep the deck between 40-45 cards this allows you to get the cards you need to get faster than if you use a larger deck.
6)Do a bit of research of the deck you're building. I'm not definitely not saying net deck I'm saying go look at what other people are playing and how they are playing it in the deck this may spark an idea of your own in your deck that no one else has thought of.
7)Make sure to have someway to speed the deck up or have it so that it doesn't need to be that way you can get the keep ahead of your opponent and get your combo's off before they can.
8)Do not have to many cards that require another specific card to work unless you run a lot of the card need to work such as Trade-in and level 8's this stops you from dead drawing cards that you need another to work with. I normally work 2 targets in for a card another (if I want to run 3 trade-ins then I run around 6 level 8's) though that still could cause trouble so don't run anymore than 3 cards (not copies) that require another specific card. A good example of a card like this is burst stream of destruction since it requires a blue-eyes to play the card it wouldn't be very pratical to play it.
9)Run a few cards to throw the opponent off as the worst thing you can do in a game is become predictable, since this lets the opponent know how to counter everything you're going to do. While they may not be able to stop all of it they can know what you're going for and stop the major damage that you would inflict.
10)PLAYTEST this is most likely the most important thing playtest the deck and constantly make changes to the deck to make it overcome the problems the deck has when playing against other players
11)Know how your cards work together so you can work new combo's in and make the deck better.

Homework: Select 5 of these and give me an example of when you wouldn't follow the rule. Then select 2 more and tell me what you think about the rule, then tell me what you would like the lesson to be over next week. Also if you have found anything else that might help a player out in deck building that I forgot(which I'm sure I am since I'm typing this up while half asleep) post it to help the other players out.