Introduction to Tearlaments

Welcome to the Perlereino guided tour.

Keep your hands and feet inside the engine, and please do not attempt to mill or discard any of the local wildlife.

Hope you've had a lovely day so far in scenic Perlereino, where we're blessed with a sunny 22° Celsius and a lovely seabreeze coming in from the northeast. My name is

A Quick Glossary of Terms

To ensure a fulfilling experience during today's tour, please familiarise yourself with the following colloquial terms. (I'm going to keep usage of these terms at an absolute minimum, but you may come across these words when you talk about Tearlaments with other people!)

• "Bin" - To send a specific card(s) from your Deck to the GY.

• "Bounce" - To return a card (from the field, GY, or banished pile) to the hand.

• "Chainblock" - Activate two or more Trigger Effects in sequence so that your opponent cannot directly negate the preceding effects. Ex. Chain Link 1 Loading... , Chain Link 2 Loading... - Merrli cannot be responded to with Loading... .

• "Dump" - Same meaning as "Bin". To send a specific card(s) from your Deck to the GY.

• "Hand trap" - Any card with a Quick Effect that activates from your hand, which can disrupt your opponent's plays, such as Loading... and Loading... .

• "Mill" - To send a card(s) from the (top of your) Deck to the GY.

• "Miller" - Refers to both Loading... and Loading... , cards that "mill" from the top of both players' Decks.

• "Pitch" - To purposefully send a card to the GY (from your hand or Deck).

• "Pop" - To destroy a card on the field (not to be confused with sending it to the GY by card effect).

• "Shuffler" - Refers to both Loading... and Loading... , cards that shuffle cards from the GY into the Deck.

• "Spin" - To return/shuffle a card from the field, GY or banished pile into the Deck.

• "Tear"/"Tears"/"Tearl" - Popular names for the Tearlaments archetype.

• "Tutor" - Synonymous with "search"; to add a specific card(s) from your Deck to your hand.

What are Tearlaments?

The Tearlaments are an archetype of WATER/DARK Aqua monsters (with the exception of a few monsters) that operate through their gimmick of Fusion Summoning monsters by shuffling themselves back into the Deck when they're sent to the Graveyard (GY).

Unfortunately, nature has seen fit to allow this archetype to evolve without any effect/Summon locks, meaning you can play them with practically any other archetype.

As if this weren't enough, every single card in the archetype also has an additional effect when it is sent to the GY. This includes the Fusion Monsters and the Spell/Traps! Because of this ridiculous self-sufficiency, Tears' usage is maximized through "mill" strategies ("milling" here meaning sending cards from your Deck to the GY), in decks that want to send their cards to the GY.

Popular examples of the above include Lunalight Tearlaments, Danger! Tearlaments, and Ishizu Tearlaments. Stay tuned for more resources on these variants of the archetype, or ask in the #tearlaments channel in the Master Duel Meta Discord server.

Archetype Breakdown

The Tearlaments archetype monsters can be categorized into three(-ish) sections:

• The "Tear girls", or the DARK Aqua Main Deck monsters with effects that Fusion Summon;

• The Fusion monsters, which act as your key combo and endboard pieces;

• And the miscellaneous monsters, two of which exist: Reinoheart and Kashtira.