Dark Magician

This is my TCG Dark Magician Deck. I'm running a budget friendly version for obvious reasons.

[ UPDATE: 8/1/24 ]

In the last few months, I have learned that with the release of the second rarity collection, that Dark Magician core became obnoxiously (and thankfully) much more budget friendly. I'm still missing a few cards here and there to complete my deck, however, this is not to say that I can't perform well competitively. I don't feel like deleting/editing the text below as it will take time I don't have the patience to do right now. A lot of the opinions shared below are still held and won't falter, no matter what swaps/upgrades I get my hands on. 

Here, you can see I run the infamous "iffy" tech card (according to the DM community), Palladium Oracle Mahad. What a lot of DM players don't realize (skill issue tbh) is that Mahad is a level 7 Light monster. Magician's Rod is a level 3 Dark monster. This means that if you can manage to Special Summon Mahad to your field with your Rod out (giggity), then you can make a Chaos Angel that's unaffected by your opponent's activated monster effects AND protects ALL of your monsters on the board from being destroyed by battle (WOW). Knowing that you can do this with PURE Dark Magician (who would've thought) and not have to run some cheesy engine that takes up deck space (and significantly lowers your pride & self-respect) truly is a feeling like no other. Not to mention, a lot of the time, you can use him as an extra body for Link/XYZ plays (BLS/Big Eye), a Dark monster beat stick (because of his passive effect), cost for Timaeus, dump fodder for Souls in addition to the +1 he provides for Soul Servant. Nothing screams "Giga Chad" more than making Pot of Greed look obselete. Besides, more often than not, he'll stay in the Main Deck and if you manage to open him, use him for fusion with DM or put him back on top of the deck with Illusion of Chaos. Let's not forget he can also do everything mentioned IN ADDITION to just being a MUCH stronger version of Magikuriboh with his 3rd effect. He can also be Special Summoned from the GY via Master of Chaos's effect and tributed to non-target banish ALL of your opponent's monsters from the field (his utility is so versatile). Dark Magician players tend to look everywhere for support except for their own archetype (crazy, isn't it) which is why Mahad is so slept on.

Honorable mention goes out to Ebon High. I prefer High over Illusion simply because High can play Traps and Quick-Plays from hand during your opponent's turn. Let's say opponent activates a card to pop one of the floodgates in the back row; upon the resolution of that effect, I can discard 1 material and activate another INSTANTLY. Then, if he gets sent to the GY for whatever reason, I can Special Summon a Dark Spellcaster body from deck and non-target pop 1 card on field. That Special Summon can be ANY of the Dark Spellcaster monsters in your deck (of ANY LEVEL as long as they can be Special/Normal Summoned). Once upon a time for me, that choice was most often going to be DMoC (but because of the 4 bricks I already run and absolutely having to Normal Summon him, he's just too much of a liability...super fun to do though). Unfortunately, because I RARELY ever have a chance to make Ebon High and flex these big brain plays, I just choose to go with Big Eye because his materials are super generic (not that it actually matters in a Level 7 Spellcaster deck tbh) and his effect is just a free Snatch n Steal x2 with no LP gain for opponent (unga bunga gimme your body to make more monsters).

Dragostapellia, Borrelsword, Linkmail, and the Knightmare cards are just generic filler cards that I use to fill up Extra Deck space. I mean, they're alright (insert that one meme). I don't need Phoenix because I choose to run the SEARCHABLE in-archetype Harpie's Feather Duster (because you can tech it with Illusion of Chaos for essentially a free search+add to hand). It sure beats running 5-7 EXTRA cards that don't synergize with Dark Magician like Talent/Thrust just to search Harpie's (I swear that idea makes no sense to me...just play DM Pure and use the space for other cards) and its 2nd effect is not worth it. Chaos Angel does it way better. Unicorn is meh at best (really mid card for 3 bodies tbh). I probably won't even need Dragoon either. I typically do pretty well without it in my deck on Master Duel. However, I'm open to testing him out and seeing if he'll be worth adding to my deck when I do finally obtain a copy or two.

Floodgates are what I'll be mainly running in my deck due to how much it will (typically) stop my opponent. Meta-contending decks tend to have multiple attributes/types and need to summon more than twice to have a solid board. If I end up learning that my match-up can play around any of them, then I can easily just Special Summon Magicians' Souls and send them to the GY for a free Pot of Greed (synergy...gotta love it). However, because I don't currently have access to Souls, I won't be running any floodgates (seldom Summon Limit because DM can easily set up with 2 summons) because I'll pretty much have no way to get them off my field when I need to cook. Also, because I opt to run Eternal Soul in my deck, my opponent will have more incentive to go for the floodgate(s) which means Eternal Soul is potentially safe (at least long enough for me to make Dragon Knight).

You might also notice the lack of the staple hand traps/interruptions such as Ash, Nib, Droll or anything in likeness. That's not how I intend to play the deck containing the ultimate wizard in terms of attack and defense. I have a bone to pick with modern YGO and how it's played. The farthest I will go down the hand trap rabbit hole is Imperm and Evenly (if we even consider that a hand trap).

Eclipse & Moon are self-explanitory. So are Widowmaker, Dark Ruler, the Runick Spells and Spellbound (they're just flat-out "no's" to your opponent).

When I'm able to obtain more of the cards I typically run (see my Master Duel Dark Magician deck on my profile), I will most likely be swapping out some of the current cards you see with those.

I currently don't run a side deck because I don't have enough cards to make a fully fleshed out one nor do I truly think I'll need one. If I do end up making one, I'll add those cards to the decklist.

As for the other cards I plan on obtaining (list below), I'll get them when and if I'm in a position to do so. I wouldn't be running budget DM if I didn't have to. I'll remove each from the list once I obtain them. If you find yourself reading this, and end up meeting me somehow, I'm open to trading (or if you simply just want to hook me up, that'd be pretty sick too, but it's necessary).

Cards I Plan On Adding Eventually:

- 1x Chaos Angel

- 1x Guardian Chimera

- 3x Magicians' Souls

- 1x Number 11: Big Eye

- 1x Accesscode Talker

- 1x Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon

- 1-3x Skill Drain

- 1-3x Rivalry of Warlords

- 1-3x Gozen Match

- 1-3x Summon Limit

- 3x Evenly Matched

- 3x Infinite Impermanence

- 3x Preperation of Rites (waiting on that to come in mail)

- 1x Artemis (waiting on that to come in mail)

- 1x Magician Salvation (waiting on that to come in mail)

- 1x Millennium-Eyes Restrict