The Mitsurugi Deck excels at Ritual Summoning! This strategy rewards you for using powerful Ritual Monsters as Tribute for other Ritual Monsters, and Mitsurugi Ritual lets you bend the normal rules of where the Ritual Monsters and their required Tributes come from. 

The Mitsurugi Deck is all about using powerful Ritual Spells and Ritual Monsters to add other powerful “Mitsurugi” cards from your Deck to your hand.  Once you Ritual Summon one of the Level 8 “Mitsurugi” Ritual Monsters, you can Tribute it to Ritual Summon another one, and each Ritual Monster has an effect to add another “Mitsurugi” card to your hand and Special Summon itself from the Graveyard!

Assembling Your Arsenal

The key monster to Summon is Ame no Murakumo no Mitsurugi. Its on-Summon effect to destroy your opponent’s monsters can activate no matter the method you use to Special Summon it, but only once during each turn. So when you first Ritual Summon it you can destroy your opponent’s monsters and if you Tribute it during your opponent’s turn and Special Summon it back, you can destroy your opponent’s monsters again. You can also make your opponent spend an extra card on their most important effect each turn.

In the process, you want to be Tributing your Ritual Summoned “Mitsurugi” monsters so that you can add another “Mitsurugi” card to your hand and Special Summon them back to the field, essentially removing the downside of having to Tribute for your powerful effects.

With just one card you can get all 3 Ritual Monsters to the field AND set up another powerful “Mitsurugi” card! That one card is Ame no Habakiri no Mitsurugi.

Legendary Technique: From One, Many

1. Reveal Ame no Habakiri no Mitsurugi in your hand to Special Summon Mitsurugi no Mikoto, Saji from the Deck, then Tribute it.
2. Use Saji’s effect to add Mitsurugi Ritual to your hand. 
3. Activate Mitsurugi Ritual’s second effect,Tributing Mitsurugi no Mikoto, Aramasa and Mitsurugi no Mikoto, Kusanagi from your Deck to Summon Habakiri. 
4. Use Aramasa’s effect to add Ame no Murakumo no Mitsurugi to your hand and Kusanagi’s effect to add back Mitsurugi Ritual. 
5. Activate Mitsurugi Ritual’s first effect Tributing Murakumo to Summon Futsu no Mitama no Mitsurugi from your Deck.
6. Activate Murakumo’s on-Tribute effect, adding Mitsurugi Mirror to your hand. (You can’t Special Summon it back yet because it wasn’t Ritual Summoned yet.)
7. Activate Mitsurugi Mirror to Ritual Summon Murakumo from your Graveyard by Tributing Habakiri.
8. Activate Habakiri’s on-Tribute effect to add either Mitsurugi Prayers, Mitsurugi Great Purification, or Mitsurugi Tempest to your hand and Special Summon Habakiri back to the field.
9. Set whichever Spell/Trap you added to your hand.

The Mitsurugi Deck is flexible enough to take advantage of good general-use Extra Deck monsters if your opponent does something to disrupt you, as long as you’ve made it to step 2 and have Mitsurugi Ritual in your hand. For example, you can do something like this:

1. Activate Mitsurugi Ritual, sending Mitsurugi no Mikoto, Aramasa and Night Sword Serpent from your Deck to the Graveyard to Ritual Summon.
2. Special Summon Night Sword Serpent with its effect, and use Aramasa’s effect to add Mitsurugi no Mikoto, Kusanagi to your hand. 
3. Normal Summon Kusanagi and add Mitsurugi Ritual back to your hand. 

Now you have 3 monsters total with 2 Level 4 monsters on field. From here you can:

1. Use Kusanagi and Night Sword Serpent to Xyz Summon a Rank 4 monster like Number 41: Bagooska the Terribly Tired Tapir or Evilswarm Exciton Knight, or;
2. Link Summon I:P Masquerena and then on your opponent’s turn, use Masquerena’s effect to Link Summon S:P Little Knight, or;
3. Use a “Mitsurugi” Ritual Monster you Summoned earlier plus another monster to Link Summon Dyna Mondo whose effect you can use on your opponent’s turn to Special Summon that Ritual Monster from the Graveyard.

Because Ame no Habakiri no Mitsurugi is so important to starting your plays, you’ll want to get it to your hand or draw it as soon as possible. As such, you also may be wondering why there’s only 1 copy when it’s so powerful. This is because it’s currently a Limited card in Advanced Format tournaments. That means you can only have 1 copy of it in your Deck.

Disrupting Your Opponent.

The key Ritual Monster for disrupting your opponent is Ame no Murakumo no Mitsurugi, but to get the most out of it, you also want to set Mitsurugi Prayers and/or Mitsurugi Great Purification to use on your opponent’s turn. In either case, the key is to look for a moment when your opponent has multiple monsters on-field, then activate your card, Tributing Ame no Murakumo no Mitsurugi. You’ll get your effect(s) and then get to add another “Mitsurugi” card, Special Summon Murakumo, and destroy your opponent’s monsters. It’s easiest to do this with Prayers because you can do it at any time, but more disruptive to do it with Great Purification because you’ll also be negating a card or effect.

Modifying This Deck

If you’re looking to add cards to the Mitsurugi Deck, Nibiru, the Primal Being Tributes all monsters on the field, which isn’t a problem for Mitsurugi since all of the Ritual Monsters have powerful effects that activate when they’re Tributed.  Along those lines, the classic Quick-Play Spell Enemy Controller Tributes a monster you control to take control of an opponent’s for the turn, which isn’t a problem for the Mitsurugi Ritual monsters!  They’ll come back to the field and give you another card in the process!  And since drawing Ame no Habakiri no Mitsurugi is so important, you can use monster effects that draw cards like Mulcharmy Purulia, Mulcharmy Fuwalos, and Mulcharmy Meowls to increase your chances of finding Habakiri when you’re going second.