Decklists: Toaru-verse/Science Side

The Science Side of the Index-YGO crossover features two branches of Duelists.

First are the Espers, who have access to Esper abilities that can be activated anytime, as long as the requirements are met. These are effects tied to their person, rather than any card in particular. Since most of the effects boost consistency greatly for LP cost, Espers have access to their power plays much earlier than non-Espers. Espers of Academy City use Synchro and Xyz Summoning, which (in this canon) are the Summoning methods derived from science. They usually do not Ritual or Fusion Summon, as the Esper power curriculum has fundamentally changed their bodies to such an extent that they can't use those antiquated methods without posing serious harm to their bodies.

Second are the Researchers, most of whom are from the Dark Side of Academy City. Although they have no Esper abilities, they can simulate Espers' calculations with their technology, allowing them to Synchro and Xyz Summon, although their monsters lack the strong Summoning energy of the Espers' monsters. Their main strategies eventually switch to incorporate Link Summoning, the Summoning method derived from technology. Many of them also run floodgate cards such as Capacity Down to completely shut down Espers who try to rebel against them. = Main & Supporting Characters =

A Certain Magical Index

 * ''Main page: Decklists: Toaru-verse/Science Side/Index Protagonists

A Certain Scientific Railgun

 * Main page: Decklists: Toaru-verse/Science Side/Railgun Protagonists

= Academy City Underground =

Motoharu Tsuchimikado
Motoharu is first introduced as using a Normal Monster Pendulum Deck, with several "joke" cards such as "" and "" thrown into it alongside the Normal Pendulum engine. This is to maintain his image as a poor student who is Level 0 and never takes anything seriously. Despite this, he is known to "accidentally" defeat higher-leveled opponents with this Deck, since it is ultimately still functional, with access to draw cards such as "" allowing him to turbo out Pendulum Monsters against unprepared opponents.

His true Deck is a  Deck, capable of performing Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, and Pendulum Summons to completely overwhelm the enemy. Motoharu has full mastery of this Deck, knowing all of the combos, and recycling with cards such as "" and "" to outstanding effect. He would be one of the most fearsome opponents to face in this state if not for the fact that he has entered the esper training curriculum, and thus cannot use magic (Fusion) without harming his own body and Life Points. Not even "" can save him, because every time a Fusion Monster he control has its effect even applied (not necessarily activated), he loses half his Life Points, causing "d'Arc"'s healing effect to backfire on him most of the time before he can reap its benefits. This is highly problematic, because he must Fusion Summon multiple times to create large boards, but if he cannot afford to lose Life Points or tire himself out, he is left with only the Synchro and Xyz capabilities of his Deck, which do not have anywhere near the same combo potential as his Fusion cards.

Explanation: Motoharu is described in canon as a prankster and a liar, but also someone who takes his job as an agent for various organizations seriously. His Normal Pendulum Deck reflects the former part of his personality, being filled with suboptimal joke cards that deceive others about how strong he truly is. His "D/D"s, which symbolize business practices, reflect the latter part- if given a serious task, he will fulfill it to the best of his ability. The fact that he willingly runs a Deck with a Fusion component, and uses Fusion even though he knows it will harm his body, only strengthens that connection.

Awaki runs a   Deck. Unlike Kuroko's Deck, which focuses on consistency and grinding down the opponent until an OTK is possible, Awaki focuses on creating unbreakable fields from the start. By abusing the effects of "Fire King Island" and the "Kozmo" monsters, creating loops of Special Summons and destructions that burn resources from the Deck, Awaki can make terrifying Xyz Monsters such as "" and "" to overwhelm the enemy and inflict massive damage. Her esper effects help her in this regard; destroying monsters from the Deck is superior to Kuroko's ability of destroying from the hand, allowing her to float into whatever she needs at any time, rather than still having to rely on drawing those cards.

Explanation: Awaki's Deck construction reflects her personality and differences from Kuroko. Awaki starts out as a mercenary in the dark side of Academy City, and as Kuroko points out, is a pragmatist who never picks fights she doesn't feel she can win. This is reflected with her choice of "Fire King Island" to support her innate "Kozmo" engine; instead of playing the resource game where she interacts with the opponent, she would rather secure the win objectively, by either preventing them from doing anything, or outright OTKing them. Additionally, Awaki ironically fears her own power; she does not want to use it to hurt others. None of her powers inflict effect damage, and she usually pelts her own field with the "Kozmo" ships' targeting destruction effects, mostly to destroy her own Field Spells, instead of using them on the opponent. Additionally, she does not benefit as much from being able to search Quick-Play Spells, as she relies on getting ships in the hand, not pilots.

Frenda Seivelun
Frenda runs a  Deck focused on Synchro Summoning. She emphasizes slower play of "Shaddolls", as without "", she has no quick way of getting them into the Graveyard to activate their effects. Instead, she uses cards such as "Shaddoll Tune" and "Shaddoll Shroud" to slowly gain card advantage. Additionally, instead of shutting down the opponent's Special Summoned monsters' effects and summons with Fusion Monsters, Frenda emphasizes rapid burn damage tactics, some of which gain in power the more the opponent Special Summons or searches. For example, "Nil Shaddoll Phlogiston" inflicts 300 damage each time the opponent tries to add a card to their hand outside their normal draw, and "Nil Shaddoll Satellite" inflicts 100 damage for each card the opponent has in their Extra Deck when a "Shaddoll" inflicts battle damage. Her ace cards are "Nil Shaddoll Flats", which gains ATK equal to the total Levels of all "Nil Shaddolls" that have been Summoned plus any effect damage the opponent took that turn, and "Nil Shaddoll Bermuda", whose ATK can be double that of any "Shaddoll" in the field or Graveyard, with a deadly banishing effect.

To support her Deck's usage of multiple Attributes, Frenda incorporates several smaller engines into the Deck. "" cards given to her by Mugino Shizuri allow her access to LIGHT and FIRE Synchros; "" allows for WATER Synchro access while also simultaneously providing Rank 4 fodder; furthermore, Takitsubo Rikou's "Heraldic Beast Berners Falcon" allows her to Rank 4 with any Xyz or lower-leveled Shaddoll, as well as easily go into "Nil Shaddoll Miasma" both on the field and via "Shaddoll Tune", which can be added to her hand via the effect of "".

Explanation: Frenda's style reflects her involvement in ITEM, where she is a paid mercenary who is trained to take out her targets efficiently and mercilessly. Even if she can't get the job done, opponents will be hard-pressed to escape a Duel with her unscathed, as her passive Level 0 esper ability prevents the negation of effect damage. Thus, the opponent will be ideally brought low enough in vitality and Life Points for other members of ITEM, such as Shizuri Mugino, to finish them off easily.

Saiai uses a Phantasm Spiral Deck. The "Phantasm Spiral" archetype revolves around gaining incremental advantage from summoning Normal Monsters, with "" allowing a search of any archetype Spell/Trap upon such summons and buffering the field with Tokens should the opponent activate any effects. The Equip Spells in the archetype help bring out the boss monster "", while the Traps provide extremely versatile disruption, being able to be activated from the hand if "Pacifis" is on the field. This puts immense pressure on the opponent to time their effects precisely to get through this seemingly impenetrable wall of Normal Monsters that provide excellent offense and defense.

Foes that expect to exclusively deal with Normal Monsters, however, will be in for a nasty surprise as Saiai introduces two major spins to the "Phantasm Spiral" strategy. The first is her esper effect, Offense Armor, which essentially prevents all damage dealt to her that doesn't deal more than half her LP. Combined with the constant token generation from "Pacifis", opponents need not only a way to break her monsters and tokens but also a monster of their own with over 4,000 ATK, just to crack her defense open. The second is her signature "Number" monster, "", and its powerful "Number C" upgrade. Saiai includes cards that treat the Summoning of her Xyz Monsters as the Summon of Normal Monsters, allowing her to utilize these cards with no penalty. With the ATK reduction and mass effect negation that they provide, Saiai shuts down any attempts to wall out her offense with indestructible monsters.

Explanation: Saiai's powers in canon involve controlling the atmosphere; she was then modified to become more like the Accelerator, changing the focus of her powers to specifically controlling nitrogen, to form a barrier around herself that protects her from most attacks. However, attacks with raw strength can overwhelm this barrier due to her small size. The "Phantasm Spiral" archetype loosely reflects this, where otherwise-weak Normal Monsters are propped up to the extreme by highly disruptive Spells and Traps, and draw from the power of the "atmosphere" of a lost city. The modifications done to her powers are reflected by the presence of "Number 37", as her innate Deck does not synergize at all with Extra Deck monsters and required extra support to make work. In the end, despite this, Saiai remains a formidable foe who has many options to deal with other espers and anti-esper strategies alike.

Shizuri uses an aggressive Dracoslayer/Performage Deck, focused on swarming the field with Xyz Monsters for a quick OTK. The "Performages" all have effects to Special Summon themselves from various places on the board or search out/Special Summon other "Performage" monsters, allowing her to conduct multiple Xyz Summons in quick succession even without using Pendulum Summoning. With Pendulum taken into account courtesy of the "Dracoslayer" engine loading up the Extra Deck with Level 4 monsters (and some of their Pendulum Effects being able to trigger ""'s broken effect), Shizuri can pump out a ludicrous number of monsters onto the field with very little issues.

Her strategy is bolstered by the presence of her Esper ability Meltdowner, which allows her to "spread" her Xyz Monsters' targeting effects to as many cards as possible. The most common use of this is with "", where Meltdowner allows Shizuri to target all of her face-up monsters and give them a double attack, allowing her to easily destroy the opponent. "Silicon Burn", the supplementary card to her Meltdowner ability, can be searched out if 3 or more monsters are Pendulum Summoned, allowing her to thin her Deck and use this game-breaking tool at no cost.

Because she is a member of the mercenary group ITEM, as well as a Level 5 Esper, Shizuri has access to many support networks which allow her to use out-of-archetype cards, a luxury among Academy City espers. Shizuri supplements her strategy with cards like "", which synergizes extremely well with certain "Performage" monsters. Monsters such as "" and "" are also especially deadly when powered up with the Meltdowner, as they can singlehandedly spin or bounce the opponent's entire board in one turn.

Explanation: As the #4 Level 5 esper whose powers involve manipulating electrons, Shizuri's Deck is naturally a dark reflection of Mikoto's. They both use the same secondary engine (the "Dracoslayers") and have very similar main archetypes (Performapals v.s. Performages) that even share support cards in the real card game, with both Decks aiming for an OTK, although through different means that reference their powers in Index. Mikoto's signature move, the Railgun, concentrates power and energy into a single source which can then be launched to annihilate the target, which is reflected by her constant usage of a 12,500 ATK "Utopia the Lightning" to finish enemies in one shot. Shizuri's Meltdowner spreads out the power into multiple beams that decimate the area in front of her, which is referenced by her "Trapeze Magician" here giving all of her monsters a double attack to run over the opponent.

Rikou runs a  Deck, focused on quick Xyz Summoning with the engine's enablers such as "" and "," as well as shutting down Xyz-based strategies with the "Heraldic" and "Heraldry" Xyz Monsters. The core of her Deck is very similar to a normal "Heraldic Beast" Deck; however, Rikou's overall strategy is significantly different. Instead of toolboxing to bring out Xyz Monsters that fit the situation, she greatly emphasizes the resource grinding capabilities of the "Heraldic Beasts," and focuses on outlasting the opponent.

To this end, she utilizes monsters that lock down the opponent's options. "Number C69: Heraldry Stalker" prevents the opponent from Special Summoning monsters with ATK equal to its own ATK, and it can change its ATK once per turn to any multiple of 50 up to 3000. This synergizes perfectly with her Esper ability (4), the AIM Stalker. At the cost of 1000 LP, Rikou can choose one monster in her opponent's Extra Deck and inflict 1000 damage to them during each Standby Phase if that card stays in the Extra Deck. If Rikou is lucky enough to open with "Ability Body Crystal," she can target 2 monsters instead, guaranteeing at least 2000 damage on the board. If "Ancient Heraldry AIM" is out on the field, this damage is doubled, forcing the opponent to find a way to get rid of "Heraldry Stalker" without the ace monster that it's keeping locked away in the Extra Deck. This is very difficult to do, as "Heraldic Beast Esox" can shut down monster effects, while "Heraldry Stalker" has built-in Spell/Trap protection. One-trick Espers who rely on one monster to carry them will find themselves hard-pressed to do anything as their LP are whittled down quickly.

Explanation: In Index canon, Rikou's AIM Stalker ability lets her track down any Esper and determine their exact location and distance away, so long as she has their AIM diffusion field calculated. This is done mostly to help her team,, hunt down their targets, and has no offensive use on its own. However, her ability at a higher level may be able to not only track, but disrupt other Espers' AIM diffusion fields. This could be a world-breaking power as she would basically be able to make anyone's powers backfire on them. Rikou's Deck here represents a halfway point between what she has shown in canon and what is theoretically possible for her ability.

(Leader)
The Leader uses a Psypredator Deck. "Psypredators" rely on playing a longer Duel, gaining incremental but significant advantage off of cards being banished, while also inconveniencing opponents with said banishing effects. To achieve these longer grind games that favor the "Psypredator" cards, Rita utilizes a "PSY-Frame" engine to stall out the opponent, negating their attempts to build a large board or make any sort of progress on her Life Points. Once set up properly, Rita quickly turbos out deadly Rank 7 Xyzs through her "Psypredators"; her two "Numbers", "" and "", are extremely disruptive and can destroy the opponent's resources at a moment's notice, increasing in value even more the more the Duel has already gone on.

In a straight-up confrontation, Rita usually cannot afford to play a slow and steady game, due to the fast-paced, Special Summon-centric nature of most Esper playstyles. This is where her Esper ability, Predator, kicks in. As with all surveillance-type Esper powers, Predator allows Rita to begin and maintain Duels remotely, as well as search for her intended target regardless of location. In her case, she can simply declare a card name, then search Academy City for a Duelist with that name to target. She can then begin her plays and set up resources while the opponent is completely disoriented. Her team of Scavengers will also actively close the distance during this time, such that if Rita is ever actually put in danger, the opponent will quickly find themselves in a 1v4 situation with no time to react.

(Naru)
Naru utilizes a Paper Fluffal Deck revolving around Equip Spells. The boss monster of the Deck, "Dangerous Fluffal Giant Rabbit", can be brought out flexibly with any same-Leveled "Fluffal" monsters, and has a Quick Effect to equip itself with any "Paper" Equip Spell of its choosing at any time. In-archetype support cards such as "World of Paper" and "Frightfur Ceasefire" ensure a steady stream of materials going into "Giant Rabbit", allowing it to build up impressive backrows of offensive and defensive equipment to slowly but powerfully pressure the enemy.

"World of Paper" also converts monsters in both players' Graveyards into "Fluffal" monsters, including after they're Special Summoned from the Graveyard. This allows Naru to easily fulfill "Fluffal" Xyz Summoning requirements with cards such as "", and greatly hinders the enemy as cards such as "Paper Missiles" can exploit the presence of the opponent's "Fluffals" to generate massive field presence and card advantage.

Like the rest of Scavenger, Naru despises the educators of Academy City, believing them to be the root of all evil. Due to this, she includes very specific countermeasures to the strategies of typical anti-Esper organizations of "teachers," such as Anti-Skill. Several of her Equip Spells, such as "Paper Fist" and "Paper Hammer", prey specifically on high-DEF Machine monsters that these groups often rely on to block attacks, with the two of them combined being able to easily OTK any such member of Anti-Skill.