Dark Magician August 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lMdlMqYPpM

 

The principle of the deck is to summon Dark Magician during opponent's turn to banish key cards of the field and back it up with some handtraps and backrow to shut down his deck and perform an OTK during your second turn.

Here the monster engine is quite reduced, we play 3 Dark Magician to maximise the chances of drawing it and have more possibilities to face the opponent's turn and 3 Magician's Rod to have an excellent tuto option tha can recycle by itself. Magician Of Dark Illusion isn't played everywhere but I put it in 1 to have a fourth monster that can trigger Dark Magical Circle's second effect and have a synergy to recycle Magician's Rod freely. Apprentice Illusion Magician is a good tuto and a Honest-like effect to bypass beatsticks or survive some battlephases, but 2 are sufficient because more could be bricky. Keeper Of Dragon Magic is a meta oriented card in this deck and will be played here to summon Dark Magician The Dragon Knight if needed in a metagame where backrow removals are common. Lastly we play 3 Effect Veiler and Ash Blossom to countain more easily the opponent's board and soften the going second's match ups.

We have a common package of Dark Magician spells and traps to set our strategy. Dark Magician Circle is a pseudo searcher and can make you gain 1 turn replacing a needed card on the top of the deck, it's the main way to suppress opponent's key cards by regularly banishing 1 card of the field. Eternal Soul protects Dark Magician and can consists on a consistant way of triggering Circle's effect each turn, Magician Navigation can summon Dark Magician too and bring out Magician Of Dark Illusion to place the combo with Magician's Rod and can negate spell/trap effets like Called By The Grave to ensure OTKs or set up's viability. Illusion Magic is a searcher of Dark Magician and is usefull when chaining Magician's Rod effect to create a misstiming and avoid Ash Blossom's disruptive plays.

To gain stability and options we play 3 Pot Of Extravagance since the extra deck is almost optionnal and 2 Pot Of Duality to filter the deck and potentially touch 1 more backrow card/debrick a hand. The gameplay of the deck makes it able to easily get rid of Pot Of Duality's restriction.

Finally we play some backrow cards to support the Dark Magician spell/traps package and lock the opponent's turn. Crackdown steal a monster to disrupt boards and can be usefull for a defensive optic if stealing a beatstick. Solemn Judgment can negate almost anything and is even usefull to protect some plays during our second turn. Skill Drain is an amazing card here when our board is ready, since the negation of monster's effects is sufficient to shut down a lot of gameplans and can completely stop decks with the help of Dark Magician circle, it can be protected by Magician Navigation's second effect and Solemn Judgment. Lastly Super Polymerization can consume the monster ressources of a lot of deck and summon a monster to help the protection of your field or pressure the opponent's board with a Raigeki-like death effect

The extra deck contains a lot of x2 monsters to avoid having needed extra deck monsters banished by Pot Of Extravagance's effect. Dark Magician The Dragon Knight is an important card against decks that hits the backrow hard to protect Eternal Soul. Starving Venom Fusion Dragon and Mudragon Of The Swamp are Super Polymerization's targets designed to slow down or stop boards of specific aggro match ups. Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon can be summoned in main phase 2 to pressure the opponent by rapidly burning it's life points, and Ebon Illusion Magician is a specific way to trigger the Circle while permitting to banish more cards of the field during battle phases. Link spider can be summoned on a Dark Magician to help the summon of the others link monsters and is usefull when our hand is bad because by sending a Dark Magician to the graveyard we can trigger Eternal Soul during the opponent's turn. The knightmares can destroy 1 monster or backrow card to break through the board more easily and the topologic is an alternative way to finish the opponent and can suppress all his backrow in desperate cases.

 

The side is quite generic for a control oriented deck, we have more options for playing second and other disruptive cards for specific match ups.

The artifact package lock extra deck hardly dependant decks with Artifact Scythe and is a good way to handle the new Orcust decks and some Guardragon decks loops.

Struggling Battle and The Winged Dragon Of Ra - Sphere mode are great board removals for specific match ups when going second, the last one being a Deadly weapon against Guardragon decks and builds that sets a consistant board.

Dinowrestler Pankratops pressure opponent's plays by adding disruption and accelerate the summons of xyz 7 monsters for more solid OTKs/finishers.