Ryo Bakura - Deck

Deck

Bakura uses an Occult Deck for the initial part of the show, using monsters that reflect his views on the supernatural. A great deal of his cards cause disruption, or breaking his opponent's strategies through various cards, which range from White Magical Hat to Morphing Jar. His favorite card is Change of Heart, a Spell Card that has the ability to take control of one of his opponent's monster for one turn.

During the Battle City arc, he uses a new deck constructed by Dark Bakura, focusing on the darker side of the occult by making extensive use of Zombies (Undead) and Fiends (Demons), some of which are based around mythological figures such as the Greek Death god Hades and The Headless Horseman, as well as monsters revolving around controversial occult issues such as death and necromancy. The signature card of this deck is Dark Necrofear, a powerful fiend monster. Once destroyed, Bakura can play Dark Sanctuary, a card that lets him have a ghost possess one monster each turn, draining his opponent's Life Points of half that monster's ATK points and refilling his own Life Points by the same amount. This is used to stall while Bakura activates Destiny Board (Ouija Board in the Japanese anime), a card which spells the message "FINAL" (DEATH in the Japanese anime) over five turns, letting Bakura claim an instant victory. These two cards were successful in pushing Yugi into a corner during their duel, until Yugi's Slifer the Sky Dragon was revealed to be immune to Dark Sanctuary and was able to attack.

When he confronts Seto Kaiba in order to gain the power of his Blue-Eyes White Dragon for his own purposes, Bakura plays a deck centering around Diabound, the Ka of his ancient self. By using Spirit Illusion, Bakura is able to weaken opposing monsters and destroy them with Diabound while protecting it from counterattack with Spirit Shield. Bakura also plays a number of tablet cards referencing the original monster spirits that were summoned from stone blocks.

In his final duel of the series, Bakura plays an Undead Lock deck against Yugi Mutou, which focuses upon winning the duel by having one's opponent running out of cards. He eventually uses The Cursed Twin Dolls to call all monsters that would normally be sent to the Graveyard to his field as "phantoms", and in tandem with Counterbalance, the two are required to discard cards from their decks equal to the number of monsters on the field. (Bakura however is not affected by this due to the effect of Cursed Twin Doll, which prevents the player was utilizing their Graveyard in any way) Bakura further supplements this with Necro monsters that summon multiple copies of themselves for both defense and to add to the cards discarded by Counterbalance.