On Synchrons

Well guys, it's finally done. This started out as a .txt file that I just used to keep track of mirasaki's developments in the world of Triple Quasar and now it's hopefully an OP-worthy treatise on the problems encountered during the construction of this deck and my opinions on how to best deal with them.

So without better to do, here's a guide on what I think you should and shouldn't be running in a Synchron deck.

====Prelude: Turbo vs Toolbox, or why this thread make sense to almost no one====
NOTE, THIS SECTION STILL NEEDS WORK
There's an annoying fact about this deck that is very rarely directly addressed and before I give suggestions on what you should and shouldn't be running, I need to cover this problem first. To put it simply, there's two fundamentally different and often totally opposed ways to play this deck. These two ways are best known as Turbo and Toolbox. Why is this an issue? Because whenever you ask for advice on how to build this deck or what cards to run, you'll get two totally conflicting sets of advice and you'll have no idea which to follow. Within this guide I've done my best to supply information for both types of deck but before moving on to the next section, I'd suggest that you deicide what sort of deck you want to build. With that in mind, I think it's best that I give some sort of summary as to what each build is and the pros/cons of each.

	What is a Turbo build?
	So, you're in this thread because you saw some video where someone made 3 copies of Shooting Quasar Dragon in one turn, right? Well, a Turbo build is what you're after you want to pull that off with any consistency. Before I go into the pros/cons of this, here's a quick warning, "Double Quasar" often means "1 Quasar + 1 Sifr" while "Triple Quasar" can mean just about any combination of Quasar, Blazar, and Sifr (1 of each seems popular at the moment, but that may just be because Blazar was still fairly new when I wrote this).
		Pros:
			It's basically an FTK deck, the ceiling on a Triple Quasar is so high that even an opponent who's opened with their best possible hand will rarely out it.
			Even when it goes badly, a sufficiently skilled Turbo player can pull a Quasar or two out of hands which most people would calls bricks.
			There's just something fun about making a board that is almost truly unbreakable.
			You can beat the Maxx "C" challenge. If you're really good you can even consider it a genuine win condition.
			The deck is very tough to power creep. I'm confident that you could quit the game for a few years and still be able to win duels with your Turbo build 3 years later.
			The deck is totally reliant on its own consistency, you can lose weeks trying to optimise it.
			Triple Quasar vs any good A.I. is often indistinguishable from Triple Quasar vs a human, this means that you can do as much testing as you want without needing to rely on having people to play with.
		Cons:
			It's basically an FTK deck, people quickly get sick of playing against them. Would you want to watch your opponent play their turn for 5 solid minutes, only to follow that by realising that there's not a single card in your deck that can break their board? It's not uncommon for the Turbo player to be without both friends and opponents.
			Because of the limited interaction that Turbo has with the opponent, it can often get pretty boring to play.
			If you go second, your opponent can end the game just by flipping a floodgate on turn 1.

	What is a Toolbox build?
	I think it's best if I quote the biggest Toolbox advocate in this thread, Fury of the Tempes.
	"The alternative is playing Synchron as it is meant to be played, as a toolbox responding to the situations your opponent put out before you.

	With cards such as Abyss, Omega, Clear and Crystal Wing, and even the smaller cards like Jet Warrior and Coral Dragon. We have a lot of cards in order to eliminate our opponent's plays and set up a pretty strong field at the same time.

	Sure. You can go balls to the walls and summon out your entire extra deck in one turn, and draw a bazillion cards. But what's the point if you don't get to use those cards?"
"Toolbox is pretty hard to define. But I'll try to explain my thoughts on the matter.

Basically, Toolboxing is when you have different options in your extra deck to react to a situation. Some might argue that this is just a standard extra deck, but that would just mean a standard deck is a toolbox.

Like, the decks I play. The main Boss Monster is Abyss, not only does he have a 1/Turn Negate of anything on the field. But he generates advantage by grabbing Tuners from the grave. But he isn't the only option. For example, if I'm facing say, Kozomo or Bujin, I might go into Crystal Wing in order to get the monster negation. If I am going against Monarchs, I might want to grab Clear-Wing instead, so I have the two options for negating their effects.

If I think they have Bottomless or something o set, then I might go into Omega, to try and bait it out and dodge the effect. If I need to put damage on the board quickly, then I have Chanbara with his double-attack. Depending on the deck, if I need to banish stuff my opponent has in grave, or get rid of a targetting immune monster, then Trishula is an option.

A toolbox is basically when you have a variety of different options available to you, and you can chose which tool is best for the job depend on what your opponent has on the field, and what you are playing against."
		Pros:
			As Fury said, it's playing the deck as it's meant to be played. For some that is its own reward, for others that can give the reassurance that they're unlikely to face any direct ban list hits.
			A toolbox build has far more interaction with the opponent than a Turbo build does, often meaning more fun and less lost friends.
			Some find it nostalgic, you'll be playing the deck much closer to what Yusei did than a Turbo player ever will and some of us can even remember the days when decks like 'Warrior Toolbox' were meta.
			Because a Toolbox build cares less about card-for-card optimisation than a Turbo build, you can still include your own wacky techs without breaking your entire deck.
			The core of a toolbox build is often much smaller than that of a Turbo build, you can even got without Quickdraw and his band of Synchro Monsters if you want to.
			Your end goal is a lot more varied than it is in a Turbo build, while it is true than Toolbox builds almost always run at least 1 Quasar, their boss monsters are often considered to be Hot Red Dragon Archfiend Abyss and Crystal Wing, which can make a welcome change from seeing Quasar after Quasar.
			While both builds are probably equally difficult to master, the barrier for entry to a Toolbox build is probably lower than it is for a Turbo build. "Out the opponent's BLS" is often a much easier challenge than "make Quasar and OTK".
			Doing stuff during your opponent's turn is cool. Using Formula Synchron to make Trishula during your opponent's turn while you've got Stardust Junktion in play is absolutely hilarious.
			Your turns are shorter, while a Turbo player will almost always aim to make Hyper Librarian as their first Synchro and explode from that it's not uncommon for a Toolbox player to focus their deck much more on Accel Synchron, and end their turn without doing very much at all.
			Toolbox builds don't mind running Twin Twisters, against some decks this can save games.
			If you build them well, most Toolbox builds can have a playable hand just about every game. The same can't be said for Turbo which by design is forced to run combo-extending cards that can brick it.
		Cons:
			Some argue that it was power creeped even as far back as 2012. While a Turbo build can FTK virtually regardless of the opponent's deck, a Toolbox player's entire game is built on being able to counter the opponent's cards, often making them hopeless against the meta. If you're playing just to win games, Toolbox is not the build for you.
			It seems to be more expensive to build than Turbo. Trishulas and Crystal Wings cost money, Quasars don't.
			If you want to play a toolbox deck, why not play the Rank 4 Toolbox which you've probably already got all of the cards for, and which may even be a better toolbox than this one?
			Abyss is such a good card that you sometimes feel like you're just playing Abyss Turbo and at that point the only good reason you have to not switch to Quasar Turbo is because you don't want your opponent getting bored.


====Engines====
THIS SECTION IS ONE OF THE BEST
When it comes to building this deck one of the first things that you'll notice is that we only really have about a 20 card core which inevitably means that you'll need to run some sort of engine. This fact is just another one of the reasons why this deck can be so hard to learn. Hopefully reading summary of the good and bad parts of our most commonly used and recommended engines will be of some help. You'll recognise most of those engines from our OP.

Chaos - The biggest problem that we have with the Chaos engine comes from the Chaos mechanic itself - to play Chaos, you need to run LIGHTs, DARKs, and a way to get them into the Grave. DARKs aren't too much of a problem but you'll be hard pressed to find any good LIGHTs for this deck. I can't even think of a single one that a turbo build would consider putting in the Main Deck and as for anything toolbox you're not much better off. Even if the toolbox nature of your deck can justify you running a card like Effect Veiler or something crazy like Ryko, the very fact that you're running a toolbox build could rob you both of a good way to get the LIGHTs/DARKs into the Grave and of the ability to fix the bad hands that running Chaos can cause (there's a reason that the turbo players call Hand Destruction a necessary evil). Beyond this, it also has to be accepted that the techs that you run to make your Chaos cards live are just not going to be good cards in this Deck (if they were good we'd be running them despite the fact that they've got a Chaos Attribute, not because of it), they will brick you and there's nothing you can do about it. There just seems to be no way to make the Chaos engine consistent without making the rest of your Deck inconsistent and that alone should be enough to convince you not to run it. For those of you who are still willing to try despite all of this, I'll warn that the engine has some deeper problems, here's a few bullet points:
	Once you've got those Chaos Dragons on the Field, what are you going to do with them? Chances are that by the time they're live, you've already used up all of your appropriate Tuners and Synchros (particularly in a toolbox build, where you might only have 2 Level 1 Tuners for the entire turn) meaning that your Dragons can't do anything for you.
	None of the cards in the engine have any real synergy with Quickdraw or Junk Synchron
	BLS isn't all that good these days, it gets outed too easily and no longer steals games.
Plant (not Predaplant) - it just sucks. The vast majority of the cards in the engine either compete with Junk for your Normal Summon, ruling them out mostly because they're worse than Junk and are almost always dead without your Normal, or they otherwise assume you can afford to waste your first turn. The only other cards in the engine are the already well-known GUB and Dandy (the latter of which is already controversial), along with Spore who looks good on paper but in reality is only good if you're already running the full plant engine, which you won't be. Moreover, all the engine really seems to excel at is getting out big beaters like that Plant princess (there's a reason it was called Debris-hime) and in all honesty, if you don't mind trading consistency for beaters, you should be running Chaos instead of this.
Lightsworn - it looks so bad that I can't even convince myself to test it. Charge of the Light Brigade is the only card in the engine that I'd want to run, but to do that I'd have to be running some Lightsworn Monsters. No thanks.
Junktion - If Junktion is known for anything then it's known for its sheer consistency. While this engine won't take you from your opening hand to three Quasars, you can be almost certain that it'll get you at least a Crystal Wing or an Abyss before your first turn is over, or at least it will if you build it right. The big thing that you should know about the Junktion engine is that it can't really be teched in. If you try to tech it in then all you'll really gain is the ability to trade already summoned Quickdraws, Junks, and Jet Synchrons for each other, which isn't really all that good. Junktion is sort of built to give you a safety net for every situation but if you're not running enough of the engine then you'll just find that you've got a bunch of cards that don't do much, it turns out that the engine pieces work too closely with each other for the engine to function with half of them missing. Quite naturally, it follows that if you want to run this engine then you'll have to commit a fair bit of your deck to it and sadly that pretty much rules it out for Turbo builds since a lot of the cards in the engine either want to be seen in your opening hand or seen after the first turn. Aside from this there's also smaller problems like Starlight Junktion's hard OPT and the already mention relatively low ceiling of the engine. To put it simply, it's basically the go to engine for Toolbox builds (because having a play in every situation is exactly what their deck wants to have) but beyond that I wouldn't touch it.
Resonator - It hardly exists, at best it's just Red Resonator, Synkron Resonator, and Resonator Call. Synkron is nice but if you want to see more of it most people would just be happy to stick a copy into a build that runs Where Arf Thou. As for Red it's just more competition with Junk for your Normal Summon and level 2 Tuners really aren't the best for our plays (in a Turbo build they struggle with making Formula and the level 5s, while in a Toolbox build they struggle with Abyss). I've seen it said that it might have room in a Junktion build or if Dandy moves up the list (Red has nice synergy with Lonefire Blossom) but otherwise I'd stay away - I've even seen it claimed that any Deck that wants to capitalise on the Resinators would probably be better off not running any Synchrons at all and frankly I can believe it.
Symphonic - [I can't speak for how well it work with the Speedriod or Windwitch engines but otherwise...] It's awesome. So awesome in fact that I feel that I can't adequately communicate how awesome it is without linking to three different people's big explanations as to why it's awesome [http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=32012283&postcount=357 , http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=31499874&postcount=12 , and http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=32187240&postcount=987 ). If you must have a summary, I'll just say this. Guittars is an extra discard outlet which also happens to speed up your deck so much that my Toolbox build of it doesn't even run Twin Twisters any more; running the Symphnoc engine makes my deck so fast that I can simply tank my opponent's backrow and move on with my turn. What more could you want? Synergy with the other good engines? Yeah, it's got that too. Go look at Iron Call, Magnet Reverse, and a few Machine type Syncrhos. Believe me it works. I'm currently running a Junktion Symphonic hybrid Toolbox and it's glourious.
T.G. - I nearly drove myself mad trying to get these to work [link http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=32105981&postcount=760]. To make a long story short their only good non-Synchro monster is T.G. Warwolf (...its at best an alternative to Spell Striker) and that fact alone almost single-handedly destroys the whole engine. Somewhat unsurprisingly it turns out that all of their noteworthy Spells, Traps, and non-generic Synchros are dependent on you running a good amount of T.G. monsters  (which we've already establish as being a bad thing to do). The only card that might sway you in this regard would be T.G. Wonder Magician but sadly she loses all worth as soon as you realise that Accel Synchron is just plain better. As for the generic Synchros, Halberd Cannon is best known for being a budget Quasar, Blade Blaster and Recipro Dragonfly are already the bread and butter of the Double/Triple Quasar player (if you don't know that combo, go learn it, it's glorious), and Hyper Librarian is already universally loved... and that's it for T.G., it turns out that they're a pretty unremarkable archetype when it comes to pure quantity. Overall, all I can really say for them is that you should just take the 3 great generic Synchros it has to offer and leave it be. Aside from Warwolf it's got nothing else of any value.
Where Arf Thou - It's a worthy tech and a respectable engine and because of these two fact I've not included it here. It's in its own section along with Hand Destruction, Allure of Darkness, and Twin Twister. As for what the engine actually is... to be honest that's pretty complicated, we should really give it its own place in the OP. Currently the best documentation we have on the engine has come from mirasaki's arguments for not using it (http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=32012283&postcount=357 and http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=32183850&postcount=974)
Other stuff in the OP - As the OP admits, Junk Bushi, Machine Dupe, and Pyschic aren't any good for this deck. The first two fall under the banner of being so obviously bad that you probably shouldn't even test them but Psychics are a little bit more complex. At first glance it just looks like their problem is their massive normal summon dependence but when you look deeper you can easily be fooled into thinking that there's some hope in their Spells and toolboxy effects fixing this problem to enough of a degree that they might be viable for a toolbox build (simply reading their cards is enough to convince you that they're never going to work in a turbo build). Unfortunately I'd wager that even if E-Tele was at 3 it wouldn't be enough to make them viable. Basically, Psychic just has too many serious things going against it, to name a couple - their monster effects are often tough to resolve (they frequently need either an extra turn, a normal summon, or to be destroyed or banished before they can do anything) and they often just don't do anything. Even most of the supposedly good ones do little more than search/summon other equally-useless Psychics. Long story short, follow the OP's advice and give them a miss.

====Techs====
THIS SECTION IS ONE OF THE BEST, BUT STILL NEEDS WORK
These need no introduction. If anything this section is nothing more than a time saver for anyone who is planning to do some testing or who wants an explanation for why we're no longer running cards like Debris Dragon.

Synchron Explorer - This card works very differently depending on how heavily you've invested in the Junktion engine, lets go through the possibilities:
	Reviving Quickdraw or Accel? Since Explorer negates Accel your choices are limited entirely to level 7s, they're only ever ran in Toolbox builds.
	Reviving Jet? Your only real option is Tatsunoko, no Turbo player will ever be happy to trade their Normal Summon just for that. Toolbox players will be happier because it can lead to Accel and therefore your bosses.
	Reviving Junk? What's that doing in the Grave when you've still got your Normal? Toolbox players will be happy with just about any easy level 5 they can get but no turbo player will allow this.
Overall, it's not a card I'd ever run in a turbo build, particularly when we've got a card like Synchron Carrier who shares most of this card's up and down sides without being so bad to open with. As for toolbox builds, it's got some great combos for Junktion players (e.g. Explorer+Junk+Junktion=Abyss, or even the combos it has with the aforementioned Carrier) which makes it a staple for those with a high Junktion investment. As for Toolbox players with lower investments in the engine, all I can advise is to test it, keeping in mind that I've already warned of the dangers of only running a small part of the Junktion engine. Oh, and this steals your Normal Summon.
Synchron Carrier - probably a 3 of in any serious Junktion build - it's just got too many nice combos for them and unlike Carrier it doesn't steal Junk's Normal Summon. Outside of such builds however it's not the best. Drawing into it after you've Normaled is bad enough, opening it without Junk can have you pretty stuck, and even if you open it with Junk it's not unknown for Carrier to clog the field even without Carrir's token coming into it (incidentally, that token seems to appear much more rarely than you'd expect). Overall, it's probably best to just see this as nothing more than a part of the Junktion engine rather than as a card in its own right.
Rush Warrior - nice for the returning effect but it often just adds to your bricks. Some see that as a necessary evil in Junktion builds since having a Rush in Grave means that you've always got something to Normal, feed to Quickdraw, or build a combo with (the fact that it can recover your non-Tuner Synchrons in often overlooked). As for turbo builds however I've been quite rightly told that if you find yourself using it then you're either not getting enough milage out of Librarian or you've been careless with how you've built your Extra (some people use it to recyle Formula). Much like Carrier and Explorer, it's probably best seen as nothing more than a part of the Junktion engine... well, unless you're doing some really weird combo with Stardust Warrior.
Card Trooper - Pretty hard to get out without wasting your Normal, most of the time it'll just set up your Grave with its effect and you'll end your turn with an almost empty field and no moves left, gg.
Mathematician - worse than Junk, useless without your Normal Summon, limited, and unsearchable. Even with the Normal, all it does it mill GUB, Quil, or Level Eater. You're better off running Hand Destruction.
Reborn Tengu - worse than Junk, useless without your Normal Summon, and makes you cry when you open 2. Only really good if you run a a crazy amount of lv1 Tuners, i.e. a brick deck.
Debris Dragon - it's an unsearchable, Dragon-limited, Semi-Limited, inferior Junk Synchron that can't make Libraian or Accel and only performs acceptably well when you run cards that you either don't want to run in big numbers/at all (e.g. Spell Striker, T.G. Warwolf, Card Trooper, Dandy) or that you'd rather Normal Summon instead of Debris (Synchron Carrier/Explorer). At the end of the day, you could neither tech it in nor build a deck around it. If you want the long version, look here [http://www.pojo.biz/board/showpost.php?p=32116791&postcount=815]
Dandylion - it's fell off in most people's eyes. While we still remember its glory days of insane combos with Quickdraw Synchron and the Plant Engine, Dandy just doesn't do much for us any more. Ever since we cut back on Mathematiciain, the Plant Engine, and Debris Dragon, we've just not been running any cards which support it and some of us have even gone as far as to say that our exploitation of Dopplewarrior and Level Eater have made it redundant. These days it's just another card which is incompatible with Junk Synchron, useless when Normal Summoned, and only good when discarded or milled. The fact that is had a mandatory (and hence potentially malicious) effect hasn't helped its case either. The only redeeming value that it has left is that it combos brilliantly with Drill Warrior.
Any unmentioned level 2 Tuners (e.g. Fluer Synchron, Plauguespreader) - They're often avoided by both Turbo and Toolbox players. The Turbo players avoid them because they struggle to make Formula and Librarian while the Toolbox players avoid them because they struggle to make Accel and Abyss.
Any unmentioned level 3/4 non-Tuners - As a rule of thumb, they both suck for us because they're totally incompatible with Junk Synchron and they're not brilliant with Quickdraw either. If you want to run any of these, you must first answer why they're so good that you think they're worth potentially making the best cards in your deck less live and secondly answer why you're not just running O-Lion instead.
Instant Fusion - To see the problem with this card you only need to state what it does - if you're fairly deep into your plays then it's a one-off 1 card level 5/6/7 Synchro which costs you an Extra Deck space to use and otherwise it's a dead card. For many that's all that is needed to reject it - if you run only 1 copy of it then the chances of seeing it are too slim to justify the 1 Extra Deck space that it requires and there's very little in this deck that's worth the bricks and dead draws that come with running more than 1. Even if you do end up seeing it, it's just another (perhaps even winmore) combo extender which for some builds means that it's not even worth considering due to the fact that you already have access to some cards which are plain and simply better than it (Magnet Reverse comes to mind).
Into the Void is a pretty risky card, particularly given that we consider many cards which cause us to discard to be 3 of staples (e.g. Jet and Quickdraw), because of this you can often find yourself unable to satisfy Void's activation condition, or even worse you can open with a bad hand that includes Into the Void and be forced to play it, only to find that you've just made yourself go -5.
Upstart - run it if you want, but be warned that too many spells kills your Tuning plays and putting your opponent over 8k can kill your potential to OTK with a Quasar.

=====Hand Destruction, Allure of Darkness, Where Arf Thou, and Twin Twister=====
These cards have so many similarities and cause so much controversy that I feel that they needed their own section. To make a long story short you just plain and simply need some way to set up your grave and fix bad hands and outside of the already mentioned engines which had their own section, these cards are the only way to do it, to many they're just a necessary evil.

Lets start with the one that causes the most arguments - Hand Destruction vs Allure. Hand Destruction is a -1 which sets up your grave and is almost always live while Allure of Darkness is a +0 which is less likely to be live and hardly ever set up your grave (most often it banishes a card). Personally I go with Hand Destruction, more because of the issues with Allure than the benefits of Hand Destruction. Truth be told the downsides of Hand Destruction don't bother me all that much, opening Hand Destruction along with a brick is going to save you more times than opening double Hand Destruction or going second to an overextending opponent will kill you. As for those issues with Allure that I mentioned, this happens to be the best time to introduce Where Arf Thou. It turns out that they both share the same problems - they're responsible for bad deck building, bad hands, and bad plays. Being forced to Normal Summon Level Eater just to get off Where Arf Thou is something you should never do but using Allure or Arf as engines will force you to do this sooner or later. All that being said however they're not by any means bad cards, they're just bad to run in high numbers or to rely on. You can probably afford a copy of Allure and maybe two of Where Arf Thou in most builds (why wouldn't you want to search Eater, Synkron Resonator, or GUB?), but just don't try to make an engine out of them. Being forced to banish a Junk Synchron is not a fun experience.

As for Twin Twister - it's only good going second or if you're willing to do some mad move like chaining Twin to your own Spells. Long story short, no from the turbo player and yes from the toolbox player.

Mirasaki made some very relevant posts on these [1][2]

====Ending: So what should you play?====
NOTE, THIS SECTION IS AN ABSOLUTE MESS

By this point you will have probably noticed that I've not really touched on what cards you should run in the Extra Deck. There's a good reason for this - the staples in our Extra are often absolute staples and the cards which are debated in our Extra Decks are often so hotly debated and so ever-changing that by the time you've read this guide they will have already changed. For similar reasons, I can quite easily give specific recommendation for what a Turbo player should run (after all Turbo decks could probably be reduced down to uniquely solvable a mathematical problem) but for a Toolbox player I cannot (their decks are too broad, and they evolve with the meta). Regardless, which is below is my best shot:

All players

Turbo players:
	These are most likely the absolute staples
		Main: 3 Quickdraw, 3 Junk Synchron, 3 Dopplewarrior, 3 Level Eater, 3 Jet Synchron, 3 Tuning, 2 Hand Destruction, 1 Quilibolt Hedgehog, 1 GUB, 1 One For One, 1 ROTA, 1 Soul Charge, 1 Foolish Burial.
	Extra: 2/3 "Quasars", 1 T.G. Blade Blaster, 1 Road Warrior, 1 Drill Warrior OR 1 Junk Gardna*, 1 T.G. Hyper Librarian, 1 Jet Warrior, 1 Accel Synchron, 1 T.G. Recipro Dragonly, 2 Formula Synchron.
			*There's some debate here, Junk Gardna can out some cards that Triple Quasar simply can't (e.g. Spirit Reaper) and it can be made with both Quickdraw Synchron and Junk Synchron but aside from that the Drill Warrior is better for almost all other situations. It's your call. GURREEN LAGGGanannana
	For further recommendations, here's a big dump of posts by mirasaki, in which he develops the theory behind his current Triple Quasar build. Studying these will dountlessly improve how you handle your Turbo deck.

Toolbox players:


====NOTES, BASICALLY A TO-DO LIST====
O-Lion is interesting, it's a level 2 Tuner and a level 3 non-Tuner rolled into one card, along with a second effect that makes some people call it a 3 or 0 card. Generally speaking it's loved by Toolbox players but largely ignored by Turbo. The latter is the easiest to explain, to put it simply - in a Turbo build both O-Lion and its Token are often useless without Level Eater or you running some undesirable card like Mist Bird Closolas, so Turbo players don't run it. There's even a fairly sensible argument that Quillbolt Hedgehog is a better card for Turbo builds than O-Lion, mostly revolving around the fact that Quillbolt is an on demand, soft OPT, self-reviving, Machine type level 2 non-Tuner which can sometimes entirely replace Level Eater in a combo, while O-Lion's token is just a one off level 3. As for why Toolbox players love it, there's firstly the obvious point that unlike Turbo players, they've actually got uses for the level 2 Tuner and level 3 non-Tuner but that's only enough to explain why they can run it. As for explaining why they do run it, it requires some mental gymnastics. Try holding all of these facts in your head at once. #1 As you can easily convince yourself, O-Lion is better than the sum of its parts, #2 Our level 3 non-Tuners are typically monsters which can Special Summon themselves from your hand but are otherwise useless, meaning that in Toolbox build which isn't powering through the deck like Turbo builds are known to, you will rarely see them in a useful position, unlike O-Lion which can often come into play simply by you playing Tuning and hitting it randomly or even by you using it to pay a cost for something like Quickdraw or Twin Twisters, which will also make it "live" is Grave due it being a valid target for Junk Synchron, #3 O-Lion and its token are Machine type, #4 O-Lion is a Tuner, #5 facts 3 and 4 give O-Lion deep synergy with many of the popular Toolbox engine (e.g. Junktion and Symphnoics). O-Lion+Necriod=Crystal Wing?

Hey, Coral Dragon should be a staple in Toolbox builds. It's halfway to being a Twin Twister on legs and the fact that it's a level 6 Tuner can often make for some great combos with both Dopplewarrior and Level Eater.

Quilibolt could use a section " You may be wondering why I run quillbolt then his applications are pretty inflexible but he bricks less than having a million 1star tuners that special themself in triple quasar, he supplements a junk doppel quick combo and replaces eater in those circumstances which a 1star tuner doesn't do as efficiently because you can't road. Quillbolt self revives for jet revival which is important for triple spam."

Reasoning? [the card, you've not even asked about it on the forum]

Refute Dark World Dealings. Easy - too many minuses, Hand Destruction is just straight better.
" Limit Overdrive is only live when we're in a good position, otherwise it's dead. It's a borderline winmore card."

Herald of the Arc Light? Phonon Pulse Dragon? Clausolas? Crystron? Other Extras in the sticky? Omega? Fast Dragon? Catastor (hey, Machine for Synchron Carrier, nah... Musashi's return to hand is better)? Junk Archer? X-Saber Wayne? AFD? Void Ogre? Kendama outside of Symph?
Clear Wing should merit some genuine consideration, it isn't that much worse than Crystal, you only prefer to run Crystal because it's usually just as hard to get out as Clear.
"Ancient fairy is mainly for if you want to make summoning omega, hot red or trishula a little bit easier but you can also use ancient fairy in some combo extension plays for like multiquasar though if you wanted to go extra summons I would argue x saber Wayne is somewhat better since he's a 5."" Ancient Fairy Dragon is actually really good, she's getting lots of usage in Synchro climbing. Dark Synchro in particular uses her to get into Synchros like Omega and Crystal Wing." If you have the resources to make Moonlight or Clear Wing and if for argument's sake you're not planning a major Abyss play, why wouldn't you want Crystal Wing instead? That's a great argument for AFD and on the toolbox side, Field Spells are getting more relevant.

What happened to Necriod and Shaman fixing all of our problems?
"I'm getting further through the thread, just to double check - nobody is running Necroid Synchro and we're all running at least 1 Celestial Double Star Shaman, right?"
Why do we never talk about Yang Zing?
Is anyone actually running the Shaddoll, Performage, or Blue-Eyes builds? From a glance at what's in the OP, I'm assuming that the ban list killed the first two and that we simply got nowhere with the others. Is it safe to say that the Blackwing guide is out of date to the point of being useless?
Speedroid/Windwitch? Does it have room for Pilica, Descendant of Gusto?
Predator Plant
Performage? Trick Clown and Hat Tricker might be straight techs.
mirasaki's machine engine
"After that there's
Speedroid--good at pumping out 7's and Crystal wing.
wind witch--excellent at pumping out Crystal wing that can't be destroyed but this " "archetype" is limited to wind synchros. It's better as an engine that uses a small speedroid engine alongside it but you will be limited to wind synchros a lot of the time so have fun with just Crystal wing a lot of the time. "Then we got Glass Bell, and instantly it just all snapped together. Ice-Bell had become a 1-card Cyrstal-Wing Synchro Dragon, who wasn't able to be destroyed by your opponent's card effects. The engine had become hugly more efficent thanks to Glass-Bells searching power, and it allowed them a much greater feel of flexibility and consistently."
Yang zing--a passive deck when pure. A deck that needs an extremely perfect balanced ratio when running the metalfoe engine. Denglong counter trap revival spam if you're running a zodiac ddd engine. The deck is mainly denglong and baxia looping on the whole. The zodiac version is more consistent going into denglong with 1-2 card combos and doesn't rely on jiaotu but instead relies on reviving denglong for advantage over and over. The metalfoe variant is more explosive using the pendulum aspect of zefraniu plus denglong to get up to 2 counter traps a turn and ending on fields like tzolkin Crystal wing void ogre counter trap or a titanic Galaxy herald of arc light. The metalfoe variant is a glass cannon deck because if it gets veilered or striked it's game over because it isn't drawing into more yang zing cards anytime soon unless you have path. Yang zing on the whole are a very attractive synchro deck conceptually but they have a lot of problems that aren't readily visible on the Surface. "I've been testing different builds of yang zing with different numbers and although the ceiling of the deck is humongous the fact of the matter is that the deck is laughably easy to stop if they go second and they don't have a backup plan so they immediately autolose. " " I don't run yang zings for denglong because if you draw both your chiwen and Bian then you made denglong pointless it's the Brilliant Fusion dilemma"

"I hate Brilliant Fusion. You have to run 2 lazuli just to stop yourself from drawing 1 copy and making brilliant completely dead. Same with clear effector which is also a terrible card to draw. Also any future copies you draw of brilliant are completely dead which obviously hinders your looping potential. I feel similarly with Instant Fusion since it has a hard opt but I do admit I like instant applications a lot more with the fusion tuner. I feel like it can be best abused in junk doppel"

Are all Junktion builds toolbox builds? And are all toolbox builds Junktion builds?
"Also, on the subject of toolboxing, there's something that's been bothering me. Are all Junktion builds toolbox builds? And are all toolbox builds Junktion builds? I'll skip the details, but to put it simply, Junktion strikes me as too big of an engine for a turbo build, but it still looks to me as the most solid way to build a toolbox."