I'm can still be considered a beginner, so I appreciate every help I can get.

This is basically my first real attempt at building a deck.
Thanks in advance for every contribution.


Darkness Creatures:
4x Marrow Ooze, The Twister
4x Bloody Squito
4x Locomotiver
1x Vile Mulder, Wing of the Void
2x Photocide, Lord of the Wasters
3x Vashuna, Sword Dancer

Darkness Spells:
4x Terror Pit
4x Proclamation of Death
1x Cranium Clamp

Darkness Evolution Creatures:
2x Ballom, Master of Death


Nature Creatures:
4x Bronze-Arm Tribe
4x Poisonous Mushroom

Nature Spells:
4x Faerie Life

Edit: wording.
Edit 2: just realized that Clamp is restricted to 1.

You are going pretty thin with your nature part of the deck. Are you aiming for BN Ballom deck? I would replace Poisonous Mushroom with Natural Snare or Soulswap Slash Charger would help your deck as well.

Gajirabute is nice with Ballom and something that you'd like to swap into the battlezone. If you feel you want more defence, replace Marrow Ooze with Gray Balloon.

Thanks for your help!

I was a little bit reluctant to put any more nature cards in, because the chance that Ballom would kill them would rise. Would you recommend adding more nature in favor of removing a few darkness cards?

i sadly don't have Natural Snare or Soul Swap, but I already ordered 2 Slash Charger.(Would 4 be better? I could only find 2 to buy.)

I also couldn't find any Gajirabrute's to buy.

Do you have any more ways to improve the deck? I'm open to any suggestions.

I see, maybe you could consider something like Propeller Mutant. Mana Nexus could bring more defence but maybe Vine Charger would be better (not certain if needed). Horrid Worm / Windmill Mutant is also a possibility but they might be too aggro for Ballom.

Out of those cards I only have horrid worm right now. I guess I'll try them out.
I really have to get some more cards.
What do you think about playing more than 40 cards?

Thanks again for your help.

I am happy to help. It is always nice to get new players even if they were in a different country. Germany has lots of duelists: have you joined their WhatsApp group yet?

I prefer to play with exactly 40 cards since that way your deck is going to be more consistent. You can still use lots of draw and mana boost and still not end up deck-outing. In some rare cases, I could consider going over 40 cards, for example when playing a deck-out deck. But even then, I would use like up to 50 cards. You should never go over 60 cards.

I was added to a german Duel Masters Whatsapp group, it might be the one you mean.

So 40 cards is the best. Right now the size of my deck changes a lot because I'm still experimenting. (And thats pretty difficult, considering I don't have anybody to play with, until the end of next week)

I'm really happy to have found a place where I could talk about this part of my childhood and I hope I can find some new friends on this site. You're all very nice.

I hope the way I construct my sentences doesn't look too weird.

Lost Soul is the card for a ND mana ramp! With all the nature accel you have, you can get to 7 mana 2-3 turns earlier - It destroys control decks! Lost Soul will never work against more aggressive decks, though...

I'd recommend adding some draw. In Darkness, Mongrel Man would be good because you have cards like Bloody Squito and Marrow Ooze to use it with. Nature has some interesting options like Wingeye Moth and Rumbling Terahorn, but they're vulnerable to your own Ballom, so perhaps try some Dimension Gates instead.
I would not recommend having the Poisonous Mushrooms because they will take away your hand very quickly. Your deck isn't meant to attack very early, so what ELTP said about replacing Marrow Ooze with Gray Balloon will work. Keep the marrow Ooze if you want to be stronger against turn 1 rush decks, though.

Thanks! Can you take a look at how the deck looks currently?

Right now it looks like this:
Darkness:

2x Ballom, Master of Death
4x Terror Pit
3x Vashuna, Sword Dancer
2x Mongrel Man
1x Vile Mulder, Wings of the Void
3x Locomotiver
2x Cranium Clamp
4x Bloody Squito
3x Propeller Mutant
+2x Proclamation of Death (switched out Torcon for those)
Nature:
2x Fighter Dual Fang
4x Bronze Arm Tribe
4x Dimension Gate
2x Torcon
1x Barkwhip, the Smasher
4x Fairy Life

I'm not sure if the whole nature creature lineup is too vulnerable against Ballom, so I'm maybe removing the 2 Torcons and the Barkwhip and only leaving BAT and FDF.
What are your thoughts? Would there still be enough nature cards for the deck?

Btw. In about a week 2 Slash Chargers will arrive. I'm thinking about including them into the deck.

I'm looking forward to your reply.

I now also ordered 4 Gajirabrute and 4 Soulswap.
Edit: It seems there was only 1 Gajirabrute left. So it actually is 1 Gajirabrute and 4 Soulswap.
Edit 2: I could buy 2 more Gajirabrute.

This is how the deck will look like, as soon as the 3 Gajirabute, the 2 Slash Charger and the 4 Soulswaps arrive.

Darkness:
2x Ballom, Master of Death
1x Trox, General of Destruction
4x Terror Pit
3x Gajirabrute, the Vile Centurion
2x Mongrel Man
3x Locomotiver
2x Cranium Clamp
4x Bloody Squito
3x Propeller Mutant
2x Slash Charger
Nature:
4x Soulswap
4x Bronze Arm Tribe
2x Dimension Gate
4x Fairy Life

That looks very nice now! Do you have anybody to test duel that deck?

Thanks!
One of my friends sometimes plays Duel Masters. I will try it out against him tomorrow.
The 4 Soulswap, the 3 Gajirabute and the 2 Slash Charger haven't arrived yet, but he is ok with me using proxies until they arrive.

Notghing wrong with proxies. They are a great way to test out. Soulswa with Gajirabute is awesome!

Looks very good now! Soulswap with Trox will also do wonders! Swap is especially useful for those 1x creatures stuck in your mana, and the ones with enter-the-zone effects.

That deck looks awesome! My very first Deck looked this if i remember correctly!

AleksVin wrote:
This is how the deck will look like, as soon as the 3 Gajirabute, the 2 Slash Charger and the 4 Soulswaps arrive.

Darkness:
2x Ballom, Master of Death
1x Trox, General of Destruction
4x Terror Pit
3x Gajirabrute, the Vile Centurion
2x Mongrel Man
3x Locomotiver
2x Cranium Clamp
4x Bloody Squito
3x Propeller Mutant
2x Slash Charger
Nature:
4x Soulswap
4x Bronze Arm Tribe
2x Dimension Gate
4x Fairy Life

Are 4 Demon Commands enough for 2 Balloms? Maybe with Soulwap it could be enough... I recommend to add 2 Daidalos, General Of Fury. It has a great synergy with Propeller Mutant and Mongrel Man. If you like to you could also add Ultimate Force as mana accel. Looks really good already!

The deck unterwent a lot of changes. Right now it is a Water/Darkness Deck since I wanted to have some more draw power and protection. I think it works better now.
The decklist is as follows:

Darkness:

2x Ballom, Master of Death
4x Gajirabute, Vile Centurion
4x Terror Pit
4x Locomotiver
2x Morbid Medicine
4x Bloody Squito
4x Ghost Touch

Water:

2x Aqua Surfer
4x Corile
2x Illusionary Merfolk
4x Energy Stream
2x Emeral

Multi Civ:

2x Melnia, The Aqua Shadow

I'm not sure if it is better than the various Nature/Darkness versions I tried before, but It seems to work ok so far.

Any critique is appreciated.

I’ve just made one of these for one of my friends. It is something along like this;

Darkness:
2x Ballom
3x Daidalos
2x Gajirabrute
2x Trox
2x Mongrel Man
4x Locomotiver
4x Bloody Squito
2x Ghost Touch (We don’t use Cranium)
4x Terror Pit
Nature:
1x Fighter Dual Fang (Tech, works well)
4x Bronze-Arm
4x Faerie Life
3x Dimension Gate (Might change for Natural Snare)
3x Mana Nexus

I also think the only viable Ballom Deck is either with a Nature or Water Splash. Both civs have their pros and cons. I lean more towards the Nature side because of the mana acceleration, creature searching and Soulswap. It is really strong when you ramp up with BAT and Faerie to cast Ballom on T7 oder even T6. In addition to that you can Swap out a Gajirabute or Trox and instantly evolve it into Ballom if you have 10 Mana. Furthermore your list only plays 4 demon commands and it might be hard to find them or Ballom (even with card draw) and you might be screwed if you have to put them in mana early where nature also helps with that (Dimension Gate/ Terrahorn and Swap/ Mana Nexus).

If you want to stick with Water maybe try to add Eureka Charger to have card draw plus mana acceleration.

Why stick to two colours if you can play 3? I have seen a pretty good Ballom deck just a week ago, consisting of water nature and darkness. You could try that

I have a "Ballom" Deck by myself and i like the 3-civi version too.
But my deck specializes on Gajirabute and its more Aggro based.

But im pretty sure its strong in a Ballom Control deck too.

Mine is more focused on Control with Gajirabute to deplete the shields. The Ballom is more used as an extra boardwipe, since there is seldom any point in rushing him out in a control matchup.