Shining Sarcophagus Deck #759635 — Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 30/100 (±8 · Confidence: Low)

• Primary strategy: Toolbox
• Secondary strategies: Control
• Format: tcg

Legality

Main 57 / Extra 15 / Side 0 — status under the rules at evaluation time: Illegal. 6 violation(s).

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Extra Deck boss monsters (Dark Magician the Dragon Knight, Timaeus, Super Starslayer TY-PHON, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon) summoned off a Dark Magician / Shining Sarcophagus engine; Link and Fusion pressure (Underworld Goddess, Selene, Dark Magician of Destruction) once the engine is live
• Turn 1 (going first): Open a searcher (Dark Magician Girl, Apprentice Illusion Magician, Magician's Rod, Future Silence, Shining Sarcophagus) to add a Dark Magician or Sarcophagus engine piece, then protect the turn with Ash Blossom, Ghost Belle, or Infinite Impermanence while building toward a Fusion or Link boss.
• Turn 2 (going second): Use the six-card hand's hand traps (Ash Blossom, Ghost Belle, Nibiru, Droll & Lock Bird) to disrupt the opponent's starter, then rebuild through the searchers.
• Recovery: Recur Dark Magician-named pieces from the GY with Soul Servant, Eternal Soul, and Magician's Rod; the GY Magician's Rod effect is the main extender.
• After siding: Not evaluable: the deck has no side deck (0 cards), so there is no post-side plan.

Why it scores here

The deck can reliably find a searcher (about 86% chance of at least one in a going-first opening hand, Inferred) and has dense interaction, with 13 hand traps and 17 negation-text cards that give it real disruption on both turns. The engine is weak as a system: only 5 of 57 Main Deck copies are exact Shining Sarcophagus cards (6.9% exact-name purity), and the list is mostly generic Dark Magician, Prophecy, Forbidden, and Chaos staples, so the engine conflicts and bricks often. No combos were supplied, so the floor, median, and ceiling are text-only inference and carry low confidence. Popularity and archetype usage did not earn points, and nothing was averaged from individual card scores. The deck is Illegal (six copy-limit or banlist violations, including three Forbidden Magicians' Souls), so the score is capped at 30 and is structural-only, not a normal contextual rating.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Toolbox. Structural ≈ 50, Going First ≈ 52, Going Second ≈ 50, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 30. Modifiers: banlist exposure (-10); no side deck (-2). Final formula: Illegal list: 0.80*Structural(50) + 0.20*TournamentReliability(30) + ContextModifiers(-12) = 34, capped to 30 under the Illegal rule (theoretical/structural-only); Meta Power provisional/null

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.86 · key two-card combo ≈ — · full-brick estimate ≈ 0.37 (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Searcher density: 18 searcher-text cards give about 86% at least one in a going-first opening hand (Inferred)
• Layered interaction: 13 hand traps plus 17 negation-text cards cover both turns and the going-second hand (Inferred)
• Extra Deck flexibility: Fusion, Link, and Xyz bosses give several closing routes

Weaknesses

• Illegal list: six violations, including three Forbidden Magicians' Souls, so no normal contextual score is possible (Verified)
• Low engine purity: 6.9% exact-name archetype copies and 67 off-archetype copies, so the engine conflicts (Verified count)
• No side deck and no recorded combos, so the post-side and combo floor/ceiling are unknown (Verified)
• 27 Level-0 non-monster cards spread the Main Deck thin (Verified)

Critical choke points

• Shining Sarcophagus is only 2 copies and the exact-archetype core is 5 copies, so the engine often fails to go live from the opening hand
• After the Forbidden and over-limit cards are removed, the Dark Magician engine loses its Magicians' Souls and Called by the Grave support, so the replacement list decides the score
• Extra Deck bosses depend on Dark Magician-named monsters, so one missing searcher or one hand trap can stall the whole line

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legality: Illegal, six copy-limit or banlist violations (legality.violations); Main/Extra/Side counts 57/15/0 against tcg size rules; Exact archetype purity 6.9% (5 of 72 archetype-tagged copies); Usage stats: only 4 of 25 core cards present (16%)
• Inferred: P(≥1 searcher in 5) ≈ 0.86 from hypergeometric draw table; Full-brick proxy ≈ 0.37 for archetype core absence; Interaction density read from text roles (13 hand traps, 17 negation); Going-second hand-trap coverage ≈ 0.81 from hypergeometric draw table
• Provisional: Meta Power (no dated metagame sample); Matchup fit (no tournament link or match record)
• Data gaps: no combos supplied — combo floor/median/ceiling is text-only inference no tournament link — archetype meta-share and per-pilot match record absent no win-rate telemetry exists in YGOVN (going-first/second, matchup, game-level, brick/starter/OTK rates) — those signals are Inferred or Unknown Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied no side deck (side_count 0), so post-side plan is unknown deck title is null; archetype label comes from the deck archetype field only