Dark Magician Deck #765970 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 64/100 (±5 · Confidence: Medium)

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

Legality

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

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Fusion, Xyz and Link summons (Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon is absent; Dark Magician of Destruction, Dark Paladin, Timaeus and TY-PHON carry the ATK pressure) built from Dark Magician and Chaos/Evol engine cards; Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl beatdown, with Evolzar Lars and Evolzar Dolkka as board-presence Xyz finishers
• Turn 1 (going first): Search or draw a Dark Magician starter (Magicians' Souls, Soul Servant, Dark Magical Circle or Timaeus), chain it into a Fusion or Ritual extender, and keep Magicians' Combination up as a negation
• Turn 2 (going second): Open with Droll & Lock Bird or Dark Magical Curtain to slow the opponent's draws, then use Dark Magic Attack or Gaze of Timaeus to clear a backrow or monster and rebuild the engine from the GY
• Recovery: Soul Servant and Magicians' Souls recycle Dark Magician cards from the GY, while Preparation of Rites and the Dark Magical Circle searches restore the starter count
• After siding: No side deck is run (0 side cards), so there is no post-side plan; Duel Links rules are assumed to make side construction unavailable

Why it scores here

The deck reliably opens an engine: the 17-copy Dark Magician core is at least one card in the opening 5 about 99% of the time, and the 10 searcher-text cards hit at least one in hand about 89% of the time. Interaction is layered across negation (Magicians' Combination, Droll & Lock Bird, the Evolzar Xyz negations) and removal (Dark Magic Attack, Gaze of Timaeus, Snake-Eye), so the deck can hold a board for more than one turn. Recursion through Soul Servant and Magicians' Souls keeps the line alive after interruption. The score rests on consistency and interaction across the whole system, not on averaging the card scores. Popularity and archetype usage confirm the list is real and accessible, but they earned no points by themselves. The score is capped by the absence of recorded boards, which leaves the combo ceiling and median as Inferred, and by the absence of a side deck and meta data.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Midrange profile used alone; Combo secondary disclosed but not blended, since no recorded combos exist to support Combo weights. Structural ≈ 62, Going First ≈ 68, Going Second ≈ 58, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 66. Modifiers: Engine conflicts across sub-archetypes (-2); Dependence on engine redundancy (3); Banlist exposure (0). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability + ContextModifiers (Meta provisional); 0.80*62.4 + 0.20*66 = 63.1, + modifiers (+1) = 64

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.99 · key two-card combo ≈ — · full-brick estimate ≈ 0.01 (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Core engine redundancy: 17 Dark Magician-related copies and 10 searchers
• Layered interaction: negation (Magicians' Combination, Droll, Evolzar negations) and removal (Dark Magic Attack, Gaze of Timaeus, Snake-Eye)
• Recursion through Soul Servant, Magicians' Souls and Magical Circle keeps the engine alive
• Full Extra Deck with Fusion, Xyz and Link coverage

Weaknesses

• No recorded boards, so the combo ceiling and median are text-only inference
• No side deck and no post-side plan
• Going-second hand-trap coverage is thin (2 cards)
• Low exact archetype purity; the list relies on sub-archetype overlap

Critical choke points

• Magicians' Combination and the Dark Magician summon chain depend on the Dark Magician core being in hand or GY
• Evol Xyz lines depend on Evolsaur Lios and Evoltile Megachirella, which are only 2 and 1 copies

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legal in duel-links: 30 main, 9 extra, 0 side; Abyss Dweller Limited with 1 copy; Copy histogram 11/5/3 and the Extra breakdown Fusion 4 / Xyz 4 / Link 1; Archetype usage: The Gaze of Timaeus, Dark Magician Girl and Illusion of Chaos are core (>=86% inclusion)
• Inferred: Starter access P(>=1) ~ 0.99 for the core group and ~0.89 for searchers; Engine redundancy and recursion support lines after one interruption; Going-second weakness from 2 hand traps and 1 Dark Magic Attack; Interaction density from card-text negation and removal counts
• Provisional: Meta Power is null; no dated metagame sample; Matchup fit and side adaptability are unscored because no data exists
• Data gaps: no combos supplied: combo floor, median and ceiling are text-only inference no tournament link: archetype meta-share and per-pilot record are absent no win-rate telemetry: going-first/second, matchup and brick rates are Inferred or Unknown Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied Guide snippets are partial (section_count 0), so strategic intent is only partly verified