Alright here's the deal, Me and my buddy(Drew) are building 2 decks. Me, a Heavy Warrior Deck with a touch of Mystic to spice things up a lil. Him a Silent based deck. We both need tatics for BOTH decks. And one for the records: a Silent Mystical Deck, one that has both Lv.s in it. Not a Lv.7 Silent but 1 Lv.6 MS and 2 Lv.4 MS, 1 Lv.5 SS, and possibly a Lv.3 SS. We have regionals in a week so I need tatics soon.

Mystic and Silent are extremely hard to play. I know this becuase i have tried them and they are actually really hard to pull off right. However if you want to play them, i'll swing over to Silent simply becuase he's better. Mystic has good effect but not good enough. Both decks NEEDS "Lv UP!" And you'll absolutly need at least 2. Contrarey to what others say, Horus is a lot better then Silent is, becuase Horus Lv 8 doesn't lock yourself down along with your opponent. However, Silent Lv 5 is better becuase you can use magic on him, were Horus Lv 6 can't (other then Lv UP!) I stronly believe in the regionals, Mystic wouldn't stand up to the competition. Silent on the other hand will be able too. The only Mystic Swordsman that does or is usefull, is actually the lowest one Mystic Lv2 (perfect for side decking in fact) I wouldn't tell you how to play but i personally would play Silent over Mystic. and Horus over Silent.

Mystic, you'll need to main deck 3 Book of Moon(s). This is a MUST need for a Mystic deck. not only to protect your Swordsmen, but it helps your Swordsmens effect and an easy kill if your lucky enough. You'll need a lot of magic to protect your Swordsmen, becuase there releatively weak and easy to kill off without protection. That's the jist of it...

Silent, theres actually nothing to him, the thing you need to do is to get Lv 7 out quick (if your running him). Thing about the Silent series is they can protect themselves pretty well with so many Book of Moons and Controllers running around these days. The only thing that can stop him is monster effect and RoD or Mirror Force. You'll need to be smart when running Silent though, your deck will need to be balanced between magic and trap. Since there so many warrior support now, Silent is a lot quicker then Mystic is.

You choose, again i prefer Silent over Mystic. If you played enough in the current enviorment, Silent ia a great counter, where Mystic is lacking a bit. however Mystic is great again'st Burn, so you can actually main deck Silent, and if you run into Burn, side deck Mystic series in to counter.

Speaking from experience, I'd say using Level Up! is a bad idea, at least as far as Silent Swordsman (or any LV monster but Insect and Mystic) is concerned.

Yes, you're getting your win condition out faster, but you're also burdening yourself with a card that's a dead draw a lot of the time as well as throwing away advantage. A lot of emphasis is placed on these things in the post-April Advanced meta. It's easy enough to fulfill the conditions for levelling naturally anyway; Shining Angel speeds up Silent LV3 -> LV5, and having adequate removal decked should give LV5 a shot at your opponent's LP from time to time.

Silent may be weaker than Horus in terms of stats and effect, but he's a lot faster when built well. Warrior has a lot of good support you can call on for use with Swordsman. And locking yourself down with LV7 isn't going to happen unless you have board control anyway, in which case losing your spells - while still a pain - isn't as big of a problem as it might otherwise be.

With Mystic you will probably need Level Up! to have it progress; most of the time you want to take advantage of the destruction effect, which will prevent natural levelling. I think Mystic's real strength comes through when it's used to compliment a theme, as opposed to when it's in a dedicated deck. Mystic on it's own is lacking until it hits LV6, so you want to have an alternate win condition in case he falls through.

However, mixing the two isn't a good idea. One will just slow the other down, as opposed to working in tandem. Silent must be in a dedicated deck 90% of the time (the other 10% is LV5 getting splashed) and Mystic is better with a full-blown Warrior deck with Marauding Captains and so forth.

Edit: While I'm sitting here brooding on it, there's something I'll need to emphasise. When you use LV decks, the monsters become your primary win condition - if you lose them, you're in trouble. You need to consider adding ways to both protect and recycle the monsters you use. Significantly more than you would with almost any other theme.

i agree, Silent decks doesn't really need Lv UP! Unless your going to run Lv7. Attacking directly these days is extremely hard to accomplish, especially with so many Scapegoats around. I never said mix the two :P I said try side decking one and using the other, and vise versa. It's a good stratagy with the two series simply becuase they play differently. You can catch your opponent off guard with Switching from Silent series to the Mystic series. However if you do want to try this, you'll first need to test out the two decks before combining. You'll have to be dedicated to playing until they suit you other wise that stratigy will destory you if you dont have it completely finished.

Remember, if you run Mystic, you NEED 2 Tsukoyomi. It's in DCR as a rare. look it up if you don't know, the monster is broken as hell :)

I'm the man that'll run them, both, although i truely don't have the support that i need fo either set, my Meseit deck is my fav. to run, it works well for me, with a record of 38/27/0, and counting, many changes happen for it, but its where i want it, with the majority of my wins coming form recent duels, a few memorable, come from behind victories...all i can truely say bout my Mystic/Silent=Meseit Swordsman Deck is I'm where I want to be with it, copy and paste the link below to see dawg!

All the Swordsmen duelist are gathering!

Anyways, I'm running a mystic swordsmen deck and like jbear and Hiko said. They are pretty hard to level up and primary weak. Even the higher levels are weak stat-wish.

Like Hiko suggested it might be best to focus a Mystic Deck on its mechanics then on really leveling up the monster. Although with some many scapegoat users out there it's level up requirements arent as hard as they use to be but Leveling shouldn't be its main focus. Instead, you should take advantage of its effect and build around that. My Swordsman deck focuses on using Mystic to fill the graveyard and using Kycoo to empty it. Its other LVs are primarily there for the reward factor of taking on scapegoats. Other techs you can consider to run with Mystic is Graveyard Control, like Necrovalley, and Hand D, like a warrior based one.

3 Book of Moons, 2 Tsukuyomis, and 1-2 Swords of Concealing Light are a must for a Mystic Swordsmen deck. Enemy Controller is also a helpful card. Although an offensive deck it requires alot of defense like Sakuretsu Armor and Waboku. Its best match up are against Burn decks and decks that rely on cards like Tomato and Pyramid Turtle. Beastdowns and similar deck types and styles will be the most problem for this deck.

Although both decks are warriors, they do not have the same benefits as the standard warrior deck. Warriors can usually swarm and can often gain field control quickly and often give you a 2-1 advantage. Meaning 2 monsters per 1 turn. Over most peoples 1-1. But the Lv decks do not give you that advantage. You can spend the same amount of cards but still only have 1 monster on the field. This might be one of the main reason that keep people from using it competitively. Your supports will be the most important thing in both deck types. Silent relies more on traps while Mystic needs spells. A 2-2-1 or 2-2-2 seems to be the more efficient setup for these decks instead of running 3 copies of the base monsters. I, probably in the minority, feel that running 2 copies of the top levels is a bad idea. Since the top Levels are dead cards until the summoning requirement is met.

Like Jbear said. Its best to really play these decks out and really understand its mechanics before taking it to regionals. If you don't gain a strong understanding of how the deck best works, not only is a hybrid impossible, but you'll most likely find yourself in a 2-card hand and 1-monster field situation with your opponent having the advantage. They run a bit different from standard warrior and basically are more conservative in comparision.