Of all the decks from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! cast, Yugi's deck may have some of the most memorable and recognizable in the entire series history. Starting as a loaner from his grandpa after his soul was sucked into a card by Pegasus, Yugi would go on to truly make it his own during Battle City and beyond, adding many more powerful cards to his arsenal.
While Yugi's deck may have changed over time, his overall strategy stayed fairly consistent, using powerful monsters like his Dark Magician cards and various Fusion Monsters to protect his life points, while his impressive Spell and Trap cards disrupted opponents own strategies. Yugi may have a very broad range of cards at his disposal, but there are some cards that he favors more than others.
10 Magical Hats
One of Yugi's favorite ways of protecting his Dark Magician is to use one of a handful of dedicated Spell card support, and more often than not, he will choose to use one of the strangest cards in the game, Magical Hats. In the real world TCG, Magical Hats is the only card that allows players to summon generic Spell and Trap Cards to their side of the field as monsters, which Yugi uses to its full potential to hide his signature Monster and protect it from attacks that would otherwise be fatal to it.
9 Alpha The Magnet Warrior
Starting with Battle City, Yugi added the Magnet Warrior cards to his deck as a way of bringing out the incredibly powerful Valkyrion the Magna Warrior. While he used many of the Magnet Warriors throughout the series, Alpha the Magnet Warrior was used more often than any of the others. Unfortunately for Yugi, he had a very hard time bringing out Valkyrion with him only being able to summon it a hand full of times, but the parts that make up this beast were used far more often due to how easy they are to summon and their decent ATK and DEF stats.
8 Spellbinding Circle
One of Yugi's go-to defensive Trap Cards during Duelist Kingdom, he would continue to use Spellbinding Circle for the majority of his dueling career and with good reason. Preventing one attack with the likes of Negate Attack is all fine and good, but attaching this card to an opponent's Monster to prevent it from attacking for good is even better when Yugi needs to buy a few turns.
Although more powerful versions of this card exist in the TCG, most notably Fiendish Chain that also negates Monster Effects, for the time, it was one of Yugi's most used and most powerful Trap Cards in his deck.
7 Celtic Guardian
Arguably one of Yugi's worst cards, Celtic Guardian was often used in the same manner as Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress #1, usually being summoned early in the game to feel out his opponent before being quickly destroyed in battle. Yugi would later use a far better retrain of the card in Obnoxious Celtic Guardian, but he seemed to favor the original far more in duels than he otherwise should have.
6 Gazelle The King Of Mythical Beasts
Gazelle could have ended up in the same boat Celtic Guardian, as a terrible Normal Monster that Yugi used to feel out his opponents' strategies before executing his own. However, unlike Celtic Guardian, Gazelle has a much better use as a Fusion Material, since Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast replaces itself when destroyed in battle with either Gazelle or its other Fusion Material, Berfomet. It may have middling ATK and DEF stats, but Gazelle proved to be the better option when it came to weaker Monsters for Yugi.
5 Swords Of Revealing Light
Like Spellbinding Circle, Yugi used this powerful Spell Card a great deal during Duelist Kingdom, though would also see it used against him a number of times in the following seasons. Like Spellbinding Circle, Yugi would often use Swords of Revealing Light to protect his Monsters from attacks while he bought time to turn the tide of the battle around. The most well-known time he has done this was against Kaiba, where he held back three Blue-Eyes White Dragons long enough to draw all five pieces of Exodia and win the game.
4 Big Shield Gardna
During Battle City, Yugi decided he needed some much better defensive cards if he was to be able to beat Kaiba more consistently, and Big Shield Gardna was he answer to many high ATK Monsters. Sporting a highly impressive 2600 DEF, Big Shield Gardna is very hard for many monsters to attack over and served the same function as Sword of Revealing Light or Spellbinding Circle.
Although it has some very impressive DEF stats for a level four Monster, it has the glaring weakness of being switched to attack mode when attacked, which is a problem considering it only has 100 ATK points.
3 Dark Magician Girl
This card was introduced in Yugi's duel with Arkana, the self-proclaimed master of the Dark Magician who didn't even know that Dark Magician Girl existed. After her introduction, Dark Magician Girl would largely replace Curse of Dragon as his mid-level, decent ATK strength Monster that also used many of the same support cards as the original Dark Magician, such as Magical Hats or Thousand Knives.
2 Kuriboh
If Dark Magician was considered Yugi's signature Monster, Kuriboh is easily the runner up for the position. Like Swords of Revealing Light and Spellbinding Circle, Yugi would use Kuriboh to save himself from an otherwise fatal attack on his life points and buy him enough time to draw into the exact card to turn the duel around. After bumping into Jaden Yuki in the first episode of GX, he seemed to pass this strategy on to the Slifer Red alongside Winged Kuriboh, since Jaden seemed to use his version for the exact same purpose.
1 Dark Magician
It should be no surprise that Dark Magician is the most played card in Yugi's deck. While it might not have the brute strength of Blue-Eyes White Dragon and it isn't as easy to summon as the equally powerful Summoned Skull, the number of support cards Yugi has that can keep Dark Magician alive and more powerful than any other Monster more than makes up for it. It also doesn't hurt that the bulk of his more powerful Fusion Monsters use Dark Magician as its main material.