How to Improve my Deckbuilding?

[!!! (AQ) Blinkill]

As much as I like the game, one thing I've always had a really hard time with was actually building a deck from scratch. I never know what cards need to go in or how they're supposed to combo with each other, prior to playing the deck, and I can just really ever get a feel for what cards need to go in and which ones should take a back seat. Which unfortunately means I tend to just search up a deck online and modify it based one what cards I like or own/can afford that won't have to much of a negative effect on the deck.

So do you guys have any advice or things you've done to improve your deckbuilding? Any thing I should keep in mind when all of my cards are in front of me, trying to decide who goes in?

[Ir0n]

I know I'm responding at a rather late date ^^'
From my own competitive experience, Deck building from scratch rarely happens in the tournament scene. If you want to do it though, I'd recommend you stick to archetypes and enginges that complement each other. Usually when I have a "good" idea for a deck I think of a certain combo and then try to think of cards to either make it more accessible during a duel or cards that can extend plays into other combos as well. Though often times these ideas can turn out pretty shitty in the actual game, so it's a lot of trial and error. That's just life I guess.
I'm afraid I'm not to great at explaining this process ^^' But let me tell you that netdecking and modifying as you go along isn't a bad thing, pretty much everyone does this nowadays.
Another idea for you could be, once you have come up with a basic concept, to grab a friend or two or maybe just someone here on the forums to give you recommendations and help with the construction.

I hope this could help you ^^

[Renji Asuka]

Honestly, here is how I determine my deck if I make one from scratch.

Rule 1: What do I want to achieve in the game? Do I want to stun lock my opponent? Or do I want to spam a lot of monsters? Or do I want to break boards and OTK?

Rule 2: Look at archetypes that compliment what I want the deck to do.

Rule 3: If its a card that I don't want to see multiple of, run it at 2.

Rule 4: If there is a card that is extremely niche, but you know you may need it, run it as a 1 of especially if its searchable.

Rule 5: Even if the idea seems good on paper, it probably won't execute very well. For example, back in MR3, I ran Ultimaya Metalfoes, one of my techs in the deck was Pot of Riches. I figured hey, Metalfoes like to pop each other and hit the extra deck a lot, so this card may actually be good. In practice, I either never saw it, or locked me out of plays more than I'd like.

[Christen57]

If you could show us the actual deck we could help you work on it. We used to do this a lot back on dueling network's forum where we would share our decks and give criticisms on each other's decks and help each other get better.