Skull Warriors - Discard Yamigitsune Variant

The goal for this deck is to create a variation of Skull Warriors that utilizes the cheap, easily accessible temporary plusses of Skull Warriors, then trade them for direct card disadvantage of the opponent.  Flags that start with lower hand sizes (Dragon Ein, Dragon Zwei) and decks with minimal forms of card advantage can quickly get overwhelmed.  The deck poops out soft and hard advantage like crazy, but if you don't open with the means to do either (all defensive cards, only cards that need to be revived from drop zone), then you have bricked and have to hope you can hold out until you can produce card advantage, although this is rare.

Buddy - Undying, Benishojo
Flag - Katana World

Items
4x Ninja Blade, Chirizakura

Spells
3x Return to the Underworld
3x Demon Way, Kasumienran
3x Clear Serenity
3x Demon Way, Arakuyou
3x Demon Way, Jugonrensa
3x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze
2x Demon Way, Sakurafubuki
2x Benefit
2x Odd Ritual, Skull Festival

Monsters
4x Undying, Benishojo
4x Companion Katana of Magatsu, Yamigitsune
3x Demon Kid, Hiunmaru
3x Godly-speed, Natsubame
3x Thunderclap, Goraiko
2x Blood Knife, Kimensai
1x Diversion Torublemaker, Bakemujina

Impacts

2x Demon Way, Karakurenai

Sideboard
3x Barbed Wire
3x Leaping Ninja, Sarutobi
3x Ninja Arts, Half-Kill
1x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze

This build plays like most other Skull Warriors builds.  We have removed Shiden and the Ninja Arts engine from the build, as Half-Kill, Minawagakushi, Item Blast, and Mat Flip do far less in this metagame of removal immunity.  Consequently, we are now running more Demon Way cards than ever before.  Sakurafubuki is back to help add pressure and close out games.  With the focus being on forcing discards, nothing is quite as devastating as them trying to use a spell to stop your attacks, then having it nullified, and being forced to discard on top of having their other card wasted.  Again, this deck has an extreme advantage over decks with low card advantage engines, decks that have small starting hand sizes, and combo decks.

There is, of course, the standard play of Goraiko with Yamigitsune to force an additional discard in the main phase.  Benishojo allows you to trade a gauge for a soft advantage that can be converted into a permanent disadvantage for the opponent.  Jugonrensa, Kasumienran, and Benefit all increase life, giving more sustain.  This deck's advantages are many and its weaknesses are essentially only to Penetrate immune, multi-soul, unremoval soul wall decks, Legend World, and bricking.  This deck has many things in place to deal with bricking and many cards can produce soft or hard advantage to unbrick you, but if you cannot keep a board (especially if you get hit with RIP Caliburn), then you can struggle.  Of course, that's in Legend World, where forcing them to discard is usually beneficial for them, so we'll just mark that as a general problem match-up.

Karakurenai is in here, because in a build like this, it's not just plausible, but likely that you will reach a point where they have 2 or fewer cards in hand, and I heard that Infinity Death Crest! was a good card.

Skull Warriors - Anti-Meta Variant

The goal for this deck is to create a variation of Skull Warriors that has favorable match-ups to many common meta decks by utilizing powerful counter cards while consistently filtering through your deck to reach all of cards you need for your setup.

Buddy - Undying, Benishojo
Flag - Katana World

Items
4x Ninja Blade, Chirizakura

Spells
4x Return to the Underworld
4x Clear Serenity
3x Ninja Arts, Half-Kill 
3x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze
3x Demon Way, Arakuyou
2x Demon Way, Jugonrensa 
2x Water Technique, Minawagakushi
2x Art of Item Blasting
2x Ninja Arts, Mat Flipping Technique

Monsters
4x Undying, Benishojo
4x Electron Ninja, Shiden
4x Demon Kid, Hiunmaru
4x Godly-speed, Natsubame
3x Yamigitsune "White Fire Shigaisoshi" 
2x Diversion Torublemaker, Bakemujina

Sideboard
3x Barbed Wire
3x Leaping Ninja, Sarutobi
1x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze
1x Ninja Arts, Mat Flip Technique
1x Water Technique, Minawagakushi
1x Ninja Arts, Half-Kill

This deck plays much like any other standard size 1 Skull Warriors variant.  It has a few cool tricks, though.  It runs the Ninja Arts engine that Katana Omni is known for.  This engine is loaded with counter cards that give you an edge in particular mach-ups.  If you draw a card that's not as useful for your current match-up, then you filter it out with Shiden or your charge and draw and get different cards in the process.  When it comes time for game 2, you side in the counter cards that are favorable for the match-up and side out the cards that don't do as much work, giving you a deck specifically tuned to counter any common meta deck pre-Guardians.  This engine has a major issue, however.  It loses to some pretty non-meta decks.  For example, it can't handle size 1 Shadow Dive rush, as Minawagakushi and Snake Gaze are the only outs I have to stop an attack.  Conversely, put this deck against Aster, 5th Omnis, Dragon Ein, or Sun Dragons, and watch it outperform them consistently with specifically tuned counter-cards and a solid board state, advantage engine, and pressure.  The remaining spells are all directly for advantage and help you reach your set-up with extreme consistency.

As for the grade 1 line-ups, as I mentioned in my video, I don't run Snake Princess, Setsuna because the card is suboptimal when compared to Benishojo.  Shiden is there to filter out excess cards.  Due to not toolboxing with Sabifukuro or Art of Explosive Hades Fall, I run four of each of the targets I want to bring back.  Hiunmaru and Natsubame give resources when brought back and are your primary targets to revive.  Benishojo brings himself back whenever you need that.  You can convert a Clear Serenity into a board with the right drop zone.  Impact Yamigitsune gives us added offensive pressure and enables 6 attacks in a single turn.  Bakemujina is a body with move that costs no gauge and doesn't retire itself.  It's useful to have in many situations, due to the low shield value of our cards in general.

This build was much stronger on release, but with the powerhouse of Divine Guardians entering the metagame, and them having essentially none of the conventional meta weaknesses, this build has fallen out of favor.  Superheroines also have a similar advantage, and they have remained popular, topping a few events recently.  It also loses to a few powerful dark horse decks, like Control Pillars, which was a very good meta call in the previous format.  These are all things to keep in mind when deciding whether or not you want to build this variant, or stick with a more traditional Skulls build.  This is a build that performs better the further into a tournament it goes on average, and would be more likely to top at a national event than a locals.  For these reasons, I find it very interesting and fun to play with.