OCG Dark Magician Deck (MR5 2020)

Video for some of the combos:



From what I've experienced, it's impossible to be consistent with Dark Magician Deck regardless of how many draw engines you add to it. The reason for this is because of the number of cards that can be potential bricks if other cards are still inside the deck, not the actual draw power of the deck itself per se.

Therefore, I did not add spellbook engine because it requires a normal summon, which conflicts with Rod (and having 3 in your deck), and since you can retrieve rod with Soul Servant, it shouldn't be too difficult with an average hand. Your normal summon is VERY important, using it for draws is the same thing as giving up this turn. You can quickly accumulate draw power using Dark Magician Fusions and Magicians' Souls, with a bit of luck you can EASY pull out 10+ cards from the deck. Draw power is not Dark Magician's real issue, reliance on a good starting hand is. It sounds counter intuitive but it's not as much as you think. Basically, for Dark Magicians, making sure that your starting hand can start in a way by having more card interactions is more important than drawing more cards. For example, using metafoes fusion results a deck shuffle, so you're getting a random deck. But using cchicken race or upstart goblin over metalfoes fusion,you can pair with magic circle or soul servant and choose what card you draw. As long as you can secure getting rod and souls, you can likely get something that matches situation, preferably a way to either get out Magicians' Souls or the Dark Magicians, which allows you to dump more Soul Servant compatible cards to the graveyard. Not having a once per turn restriction also helps tremendously compared to metafoes fusion.

Your main goal is to dump Mana/Dark Magician/Dark Magician Girl/Mahad to the graveyard, then gaining draws from it.

Rod and Magician's Souls are the main starting point of Dark Magician Deck, therefore it is necessary to max all of them.

Dark Magic Circle is one of the most important card in the deck, and since it can potentially draw a card if it is a Dark Magician spellcard(which is guaranteed used with soul servant), it is recommend to put all three.

Soul Servant is the main method of search your deck, it can search anything DM related in Deck/GY, its only downside is that it can be a brick starting with it turn one, but you can alleviate this by using in combination with Chicken Race or Magician's Souls.

On the other hand, Eternal Soul and Navigation are easily Searchable, so having all 3 is not necessary, especially when they can be bricks when you don't have Dark Magician in GY or in hand. Navigation in particular since you generally only really need to dump 2 monsters at once with Navigation in an entire match for fusion.

1 Mana, you only need one Mana, since you can dump her using magicians' souls (which should be your first priority most of the time when using Magicians' Souls) and you really want her to stay there or on the field, not in your hand or the deck. Mana is very good for deterring your opponent from targeting your monsters, since she is quite pesky in the sense that she can summon Dark Magician Girl from the deck when she is destroyed, in turn giving your +1 draw power from Soul Servant while leaving a monster on field. If Your Magicians' Souls get Effect Veilered, to the very least you can go for Red-Eyes Dragoon using Verte Anaconda using Magicians' Souls and Mana as materials.

 

1 Mahad can counter many dark monsters, including Dragoon and Chaos Max Dragon.

2 Eternal Soul is nice to have on hand if you have another card that can get Dark Magician to the GY or hand, but having 3 is more than necessary, especially when it is easily searchable and even retrieve from GY with Soul Servant. Retrieving it using Soul Servant+The Dark Magicians also allows to summon Dark Magician on the same turn, which is very useful.

1 Secrets of Dark Magic is very important for summoning Dragon Knight and The Dark Magicians, but one is enough since it's searchable and generally you'll only use it twice at most, and you can use soul servant to retrieve it from GY as well. If you have Dark Magician Girl if your hand, you can also use her instead of Dark Magician for fusion to get her in the GY, which is very important for Soul Servant.

1 Illusion Magic is used for retrieving Dark Magician to your hand for Fusion/Navigation/Eternal Soul, as well as protecting your monsters from other more harmful effects than being sent to GY.

1 Eye of Timaeus, this card is not searchable but at same time can be bricky when running multiple. Since this Deck already uses Secrets of Dark Magic, you don't really need more than 1.

One Apprentice Illusion Magician, since there's only one Navigation in the Deck, the need to use her to get Dark Magician in hand doesn't come up that often. She can also be special summoned using Navigation, which can you an opportunity to fusion Dragun of Red-Eyes or Dragon Knight when it's your turn.

That sums up the Dark Magician cards.

I used Chicken Race over Upstart Goblin and Metafoes Fusion, mainly because: 1. You do not have a once per turn restriction; 2. You can use Chicken Race to draw a card, then use Magician's Souls to get rid of it to draw another, giving you two cards in the process.

1 Terraforming, since you're already running Chicken Race and Secret Village.

1 Super Polymerization, since it's searchable with Verte Anaconda you don't need that many. Moreover, you can also use this to remove most enemies since Verte can make another monster dark as well.

1 Red-Eyes Fusion and 1 Red-Eyes Black Dragon, because Dragun of Red-Eyes is OP.

Dark Magician Deck is very weak to enemy hand traps, so at least 2 called by the grave is pretty necessary, I feel. The Card Three Tactical Talents will also help tremendously when you're faced with such a situation.

1 Secret Village of the Spellcasters, though it may be side decked since it's a rather situational and can affect you as well (it will hurt you more than help you against decks like Poltergeist).

handtraps are handtraps. You can change with w/e you like, though some Effect Veiler is recommended because it's a magician monster, which allows you to summon Selene which can summon Spellcasters from graveyard, and can link summon into Accesscode Talk for a whooping 5300atk. You can also use it as The Dark Magicians fusion material, or Illusion magic.

As for Extras:

Dragon Knight: This + Eternal Soul is very powerful against many decks (though it's not infallible such as against Orcust), definitely bring one, though you only need 1 since it counts as Dark Magician and as such can be summoned with Eternal Soul even if it is sent to the GY.

Dragun of Red-Eyes and Verte Anaconda: I don't think I need to say anything how powerful this combo is. Even some Orcust run it nowadays.

Starving Venom Fusion Dragon: Very easy to summon using super poly, especially with superpoly and vertes (which can turn one of the monsters into dark). At minimum it works on any monster that can be targeted and effected, since you can turn it into dark and use verte for the other material.

The Dark magicians: Extremely easy to summon, offers great draw power and can potentially get Dark Magician Girl on field for more Soul Servant draw power. It can also draw a card and set it and use on the same turn, in including Eternal Soul, which goes VERY WELL with cards like soul servant. Use its draw ability wisely every turn, save it until using soul servant and/or dark magic circle

Needlefiber/Selene/Accesscode Talker: Use a card+handtrap to summon it lategame, and you can use it to summon Selene, which can summon Dragun from GY if you need it. Alternatively, you can also use her to summon another Spellcaster then use them to link Summon Accesscode Talker (5300atk+destroying multiple cards without triggering them) to finish the opponent.

Knightmare Phoenix: Link-2 Summon, if the opponent runs Imperial Order this is your way out.

Imduk: Dark Magician can Link summon Imduk, so if you have two Dark Magicians on field or 1 in hand, you can make a Dragon Knight or Dragun. Having two Dark Magician on field is not a difficult task most of the time.

Linkuriboh: Since Linkcross is getting banned in July, it's less useful, but you can still convert Magician Souls into this to minimize damage. It's also necessary for easy summoning of Ningirsu: Normal summon a handtrap → Summon Needlefiber → Search Effect Veiler from Deck → Make Veiler into Linkuriboh → Ningirsu

Galaxy Tomahawk:

This is a a bit long, but basically it's extremely useful for setting up a powerful board with Dark Magician, since it creates tokens to summon link monsters like Ip Astram.

I've learned it from a Dark Magician veteran, a powerful combo with only 2 cards:

Rod + Magicians' Souls

Rod → Soul Servant → Magicians' Souls to summon Dark Magician → Soul Servant to fetch Mahad → XYZ summon Tomahawk → make Verte Anaconda + Union Train + Ip → Red-Eyes Fusion summon Dragun of Red-Eyes → Use Union Train and Equip Dark Magician Girl on Ip.  If you have extra bricks in hand, you can also consider using Verte's first effect then have Dragun deny it to get 1000atk AND remove it to save you from Sky Striker Roze/superpoly. Next turn Make Astram, Dark Magician Girl gets sent to GY, now you have Dragun + Astram, AND 3 Soul Servant related card in GY, meaning you can draw 3 cards with it.

As for the side decks, I don't have great ones in mind atm. Phantazmay is not only good synergy with Dark Magician Deck due to it being a dragon, it also pairs with  Nibiru, allowing to get the draws AND clear the board together. With Forbidden Drop I feel like Kaiju monsters aren't as necessary now, and since it can discard cards on field, you can use it to discard Chicken Race with no real cost (and probably benefits you).

Consider wiping opponent backrow if they're heavy on spell/traps with Dark Magic Attack.

Union Train can be used when making Ip + Verte combo,  since you'd have 6 monsters/tokens on board, leaving two left. You can use this method to bring out Dark Magicians or Palladium oracles then either equip it on the link monsters so when they are sent to graveyard as material, it gets dumped to the graveyard as well. Alternatively, you can also use Magicians' Souls to send it to graveyard while gaining a draw from it.

Skill Drain is useful but like Village can also hurt you, especially against Poltergeist.

If the opponent is a big fan of disabling magic cards, stuff all Typhoon the from side deck so you can stand a chance by destroying their cards like Secret Village of Spellcasters or Imperial Order.