The 1 $ Budget

 

As someone who has spent way too much time and money on pointless pieces of paper (like a university degree), I can understand that sometimes, people just don't have enough faith in their gag reflex to help fund their childrens' card game needs. Sometimes, you just can't afford to spend more than 1 dollar, and today, we'll see what we can build with exactly that. 

• Disclaimer: The following decks are all meant to get you up to a top three at locals (maybe 1st place with some effort), don't expect miracles.
• Keep in mind: The one thing budget and generally rogue/lower tier decks have going for them over the popular decks is the element of surprise, aka the opponent doesn't know what they're dealing with. In order for this not to cancel itself out, you need to know how your opponent's Deck works. Your advantage is knowledge, that your opponent respectively lacks. Study what's popular decks/meta before heading to a tourney, and, if possible, test it out yourself on some online platform. If you have to stop your opponent and ask if you can read his cards, you've already lost.
• Budget will be based on cardmarket, at lowest average price (no "lucky deals" in this) with max total budget used at 1,10 Euro, shipping not included.
• If you had a 30$ budget you can just get any structure deck of the last decade X3 and make either a decent deck or some really annoying sh!t that's plagued the game way longer than it has any right to. Again, we're just looking at what can be made with spare change.
• I'm checking based on Euro prices with 1,10 Euro being the max budget, so technically in dollars it can reach up to 1,33$. I doubt it will, but if I'm off by 0,23$ or something don't shoot.
• The Decks will be graded with a difficulty rating, from D to A, with D being autopilots, and A requiring careful plays.
• Everything listed below, I have made at some point IRL and gone through extensive, successful testing. I'm not just listing things you can make dirt cheap, I'm listing things you can make dirt cheap and win with.
  
  

D/D/D

Starting off with an archetype beloved by many, D/D/Ds have received a lot of support over the course of Arc-V and a few nice gifts afterwards, resulting in 4+ pages worth of cards on DB. With a surprising 70-80% of them being practical, there are a lot of ways to build D/D/Ds (personally I have 3 IRL decks with completely different focuses on each, and I've been thinking about making a 4th one eventually) and a lot of impressive stuff you can pull off with the various builds.

Sticking with the budget unfortunately means no "Lamia", but almost everything else is fair game. You will probably want to run "Gate Contract" & "Kepler" X3 in all your builds, but after that, go nuts. The Deck can surprise you just as much as it can the opponent even at a pure build, and the sky's the limit with mixed builds. Here's something I threw together in 2 minutes, and as far as I remember it was with almost the same recipe that I topped locals about 3-3.5 years ago (no, it wasn't during master rule 4, but still):

Difficulty: A

Pure Gouki

Pure Gouki is very close to my irl recipe as well, with very minor changes, since I had to stick to the budget limit. With every single card of the deck being at 2-4 cents and nearly all the Goukis having floating effects, it's no wonder these things were super popular for years. The lack of proper spells/traps did hurt the deck, but ultimately, Goukis are still a perfectly viable Link 4 popping deck.

"Moonsault" X2 is non-negationable, hell at one point I ran him X3 irl. You will learn how to use both him and "Thunder Ogre" every. single. turn. Because of the Goukis' common mechanic people are often wasteful with their resources, don't do that. The good news is that after that, Goukis don't require much in the way of decision making, other than which Link 4 you will bring out each time (personally I'd go for either "Master Ogre" or "Powerload Ogre" depending on the opening hand and what I know of the opponent's Deck). (Also how to use "Twistcobra" best.) It's just some basic combos you will have to learn, mostly involving going to and from "Thunder Ogre".

Difficulty: C

Deskbots

I actually got the idea to write this article when I randomly found them amongst my deck piles yesterday (I have about 140 decks irl for the record), so I did an opening hand test out of nostalgia. It resulted, after using them for the first time in some 4-5 years or so, in an adorable 18000 ATK with Armades lock, so... You know, there's that. Truth be told I have never taken them to locals, but I have used them plenty of times against friends in the past, and they used to perform pretty well. I eventually stopped playing them because they did the exact same thing every duel, which gets tiresome fast.

Practice a lot with these things, the order in which you use effects is surprisingly not important, but your choices for adds/summons from deck/reshuffles in each case will determine the games, especially as far as Pendulums are concerned. The recipe is basically everything X3 and then some backrow clearance ("MST" being my goto) and disrupts for the disrupts, to help the OTKs go through.

Difficulty: B

Hazy Flame

One of the fondest memories I have of Yugi is a large gathering with friends, during Zexal era. One of them was a certain douchebug (for unrelated reasons) who had gone out of his way to get a full BA deck of the time, at 300+ euros. I didn't win 1 match against him, I won 3, in a row, in front of everyone, it wasn't even close. Granted, that was a long time ago, but it goes to show that an entire deck of untargettables can be a really bad matchup against certain decks.

One of the mistakes I see people make often with Hazy Flames is stick other, targettable stuff in. Those folks are missing the point: Having an entire deck of hexproof monsters means that the opponent is probably getting a lot of dead draws in there. Playing even one monster that's targetable automatically means that the opponent has an appropriate target for his dead cards, even if sub-optimal, removing your advantage.

Stick to a roughly 20/20 recipe of monsters and spells (and ONLY spells), so that you have a higher chance of getting "Sphynx" right every single turn (on that note, remember to count your visible "Hazy" cards to calculate what there is more left of in the Deck, monsters or spells). You basically want every "Hazy" card X3, other than the Trap, which you don't want to run at all, and "Mantikor", for which you only want 1 copy. Hazys only have 1 "combo", and that's using "Peryton"'s effect to get 2 copies of "Hydra" from the Deck, resulting in a 4 material "Basiltrice" on his own. There is also "Rekindling" for which you have 3 available monsters. Other than that you have plenty of room to experiment with the Spells even at the lowest budget, so go nuts.

Difficulty: D

Tenyi

Funny thing about "Tenyi": Their Synchro is one my 2 favourite cards of all time (automatically assume that anything with "Berserker" in its name is gonna be awesome), and "Tenyi" as a deck are one of my favourite this past year, but even in the non-budget version I use in DB rated and the IRL version, I don't use their Synchro in their own Deck. "Tenyi" are best played as a non-effect Link 3 beatstick engine, and they've gotten a lot of Extra Deck monsters that they don't need over time.

Basically every maindeck "Tenyi" card, "Vessel for the Dragon Cycle" and "Waterfall of Dragon Souls" X3, and after that just fill the spots with whatever ("MST" being the usual suspect to come to mind). Personally I don't bother with "Heavenly Dragon Cycle", but it is an option.

Difficulty: C

Pure Performapal

Like every protagonist, Yuya got a lot more cards than a deck would ever needed, to the point that even without adding "Odd-Eyes" or the "Magician"s, there are 5 DB pages worth of cards to choose from for "Perfomapal" alone. Granted, not everything's gonna be worth running, especially if you want a pure build, but there's still a lot of stuff in there to experiment with. Personally I have 3 different pure Performapal decks irl and about 5 more with "Odd-Eyes" and "Magicians" mixed in.

Depending on the build you decide (and there's a LOT to decide from), pure Performapals will usually end up being a nutty beatdown deck, reaching some average 4-5000 ATK for 1 or more monsters and some pretty crazy +ing if left unopposed. The pic below is just something I threw together as an example in a minute, not remotely a strict recipe to be followed.

Some of the cards you want to pay attention to are "Guitartle" and "Lizard-Draw" (preferrably played in that exact order, as scales), the non-opt "Secondonkey" and obviously "Pendulum Sorcerer", for some of the +ing effects. I also recommend "Echo Oscillation" for extra draws and versatility. A friend IRL often jokes that these things could pass as an Exodia engine.

Difficulty: A

F.A.

The most recent addition to our list thanks to their new wave of support with the U.A. joining, F.A.s are now consistent enough to have a lot of cancer fun with. Make no mistake though, despite the newcomers to the track, "Hang on Mach" remains our main "f@ck you" contestant. For the uninitiated: F.A.s climb up in Levels and ATK with every Spell/Trap Card or effect you trigger, usually translating to a 3-4k beatsticks with lockdowns without even overextending. It also usually means a 3k Dark Law unaffected by monster effects and probably untargettable/undestroyable by effects that keeps getting bigger every turn.

I'm still experimenting with the exact ratios, but the Quick-Plays all seem to be 3-ofs, same with the Field Spells other than "Off-Road Grand Prix", which is just terrible. Consider running "Double Cyclone" in this, as horrible as it sounds. Blowing up your Field Spells will trigger their add effect, meaning +1 for your F.A.s, adding their replacement Field Spell, which on activation will be another +1 for your F.A.s, then whatever effect it has will be another +1 for them without what it does even being counted. Also be the better man and don't banish "Pit Stop" from the GY before you have used all 3 of its copies, it pains my heart every time I see people do this.

Edit: I have been experimenting with them even more lately, and F.A.s can genuinely get REALLY scary if you're a bit creative with the recipe. Playtest them a lot, knowing exactly how their mechanics work results in terrifyingly more powerful combos.

Difficulty: A

Dinomist

I actually have come 1st at locals with pure "Dinomists" twice, with the only "expensive" cards used being "Yuki" X3 and a "Knightmare Phoenix" in the Extra. Hell, I'm still using them in rated every now and then and they still perform really well. 

The recipe is simple: Get no copies of the Normal Traps, 2 Copies of Stegosaur, 2 copies of the field Spell (it does not have "Dinomist" in its name so keep that in mind) and everything else X3, then just fill the remaining 9 spots with a combination of "MST", "World Legacy Clash", "Pendulum Switch", "Limiter Removal", "Spiritual Water Art - Aoi", "Bad Aim" or just about any other Spell/Trap or handtrap you can find. It is unlikely that you will need to use the Extra Deck beyond the Pendulums, but just in case, some super-budget choices include "Mistar Boy" and "Qliphort Genius".

"Dinomists" only lack Spell/Trap removal, and otherwise are a fairly competent (for their budget) beatdown archetype, that, depending on opening hand, can go either 1st or 2nd, so losing RPS is not the end of the world. Keep in mind that you will have to learn to make the most out of both "Charge" and "Howling", which are easily the best and most versatile cards fo the Deck. Also: Do not underestimate the Field Spell's Armades lock, I know that a Field Spell that doesn't +you doesn't seem good in 2020 but even today there are a lot of Decks that it f@cks over.

Difficulty: B

Paleozoics

(my irl version includes the frog engine) Not much to say about these things other than that they are annoying. Their variety of normal disruption effects that you'd get from running generic traps accompanied by their free material gain afterwards bring the entire game down to their speed.

The reason for some of the more bizarre choices in there like "Jar of Greed" and "Dust Tornado" is that I want more Normal Traps for them to resurrect off, and also more stuff to fuel "Redeemable Jar", without wasting the "Paleozoics" themselves (also "Dust Tornado" specifically works well with their draw 2).

To the examples above add "Dinowrestler", probably. I have never played them, but most of the cards I've read seemed pretty ok. The above are just examples of what you can make with practically zero cash, spend an afternoon or two comparing prices on cardmarket or a similar site and have fun with it. 

And now to end with something wholesome: