Dark Magician Deck #765543 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 64/100 (±6 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Stun, Toolbox
• Format: duel-links

Legality

Main 30 / Extra 9 / Side 0 — status: Legal.

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Dark Magician engine (Rod, Curtain, Soul Servant, Magicians' Souls) converting into Extra Deck pressure: Dark Magician Dragon Knight, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Dark Paladin, Master of Chaos, Underworld Goddess; Dark Magician of Destruction and Day-Breaker as board-building follow-up through Chaos and Spellcaster summons
• Turn 1 (going first): Search or draw into Dark Magician / Magician's Rod, use Dark Magical Curtain or Dark Magical Circle to find the next Dark Magician Spell/Trap, then build a Link or Fusion board while holding Effect Veiler for the opponent's first effect
• Turn 2 (going second): Hold Effect Veiler, Droll & Lock Bird and Nibiru as hand traps against the opponent's first summon or draw, then rebuild through Magicians' Souls and Soul Servant recursion
• Recovery: Recycle Soul Servant, Magicians' Souls and Magician's Rod from the GY, and use Timaeus or Illusion of Chaos to re-add a Dark Magician or Magician-named Spell/Trap
• After siding: Not applicable: Duel Links has no side deck, so there is no post-side plan in this format

Why it scores here

The deck opens a functional Dark Magician engine reliably: the 15-copy archetype core has about a 98% chance of at least one starter in a 5-card opening hand, and 10 searcher-text cards add further redundancy, so the score rests on system-level access rather than on any single card. Conversion is credible but unverified: no recorded boards exist, so the ceiling (Dragon Knight, Dragoon, Paladin, Master of Chaos) and the median are text-only inferences, and they were scored separately. Interaction and resilience are strong on paper, with 7 hand-trap-tagged cards, 6 negation-text and 7 removal-text cards, and recursion through Soul Servant and Magicians' Souls, though 3x Dark Magical Curtain, 3x Effect Veiler and 2x Droll & Lock Bird add dead-card risk when no Dark Magician is on the field. Popularity (archetype usage) confirms the list is real and accessible but earned no points by itself, and the score did not come from averaging card scores. Duel Links has no side deck and no metagame sample is supplied, so Meta Power is null and the final score uses the 0.80 Structural + 0.20 Tournament Reliability formula.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Midrange. Structural ≈ 66, Going First ≈ 67, Going Second ≈ 68, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 65. Modifiers: Dead-card risk outside the engine (-2). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability (Meta provisional); 65.8 before modifiers, -2 modifier applied

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.98 · key two-card combo ≈ — · full-brick estimate ≈ 0.02 (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Archetype core is very reliable to open (about 98% for at least one starter)
• Eight-plus searcher and recursion effects spread across the deck
• Seven hand traps and six negation-text cards give interaction on both turns
• Full 9-slot Extra Deck with several 2800-3000 ATK pressure options

Weaknesses

• No recorded boards, so combo ceiling and median cannot be measured
• Dead-card exposure from 3x Curtain, 3x Veiler and 2x Droll outside the engine
• Heavy reliance on the Dark Magician core: only about 36% exact-name archetype purity
• No post-side plan, since Duel Links has no sideboard

Critical choke points

• Dark Magician on the field or in hand: most lines route through it
• Magician's Rod and Soul Servant as the main recovery route after a wipe

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legal status: 30 Main, 9 Extra, 0 Side within Duel Links size rules; Copy counts and banlist status Unlimited for all 26 distinct cards; Usage stats: core cards Gaze of Timaeus, Dark Magician Girl, Dark Magical Circle at 94-100 percent inclusion
• Observed: Archetype usage is recorded (23 stat rows); no recorded boards or match results
• Inferred: Opening-hand probabilities (hypergeometric, Main Deck only); Ceiling, median and resilience from card text; Going-second hand-trap estimate 0.83
• Provisional: Meta and format fit (no dated meta sample); Side-deck score is a neutral placeholder
• Data gaps: no combos supplied: combo floor, median and ceiling are text-only inference no tournament link: archetype meta-share and per-pilot record absent no win-rate telemetry: going-first, going-second, matchup and brick rates are Inferred or Unknown Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied Deck title is null; scored from archetype and card list