Darklord Deck #773621 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 55/100 (±6 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Toolbox
• Format: master-duel

Legality

Main 40 / Extra 15 / Side 0 — status: Legal.

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Fusion Summon a DARK Fairy boss (Darklord Eveningstar, The First Darklord, or Vidolium at 5000 ATK) once the Darklord engine has refilled the board from the GY.; Link and Fusion pressure from Condemned Darklord, Rahamu-style Link bodies and Darklord Morningstar.
• Turn 1 (going first): Open a Darklord starter (Djehuty, Gulgolet or Ixchel), special summon the Darklord tokens or recursion pieces, then use Banishment or Contact to add or revive the next Darklord and hold Ash Blossom and Dominus Impulse for the opponent's first response.
• Turn 2 (going second): Use Ash Blossom, Herald of Orange Light, Maxx C and Dominus Impulse to break the opponent's first board, then rebuild through Darklord Dance and Gulgolet recursion.
• Recovery: Recover from a removed board through GY-based Darklord recursion (Contact, Djehuty, Gulgolet and Ixchel all return to the field from the GY or are added from the Deck) and Condemned Darklord as a re-link.
• After siding: No Side Deck is run (side count 0), so there is no post-side plan; the list cannot adapt between games in a best-of-3.

Why it scores here

The deck reliably opens its engine: the core Darklord set appears in nearly every opening hand (P ≥ 0.9996 for at least one archetype-core card at 30 copies), and the three-copy starters (Djehuty, Gulgolet, Ixchel) each give roughly a one-in-three chance of being live in the opening five. Once the board is cleared, GY-based recursion and Darklord Contact keep the deck refilling, which is what earns the resilience and resource points. Interaction is the strongest part of the list: Ash Blossom, Dominus Impulse, Herald of Orange Light, Maxx C, Forbidden Droplet, Crossout Designator and Darklord Rebellion give layered answers that score well in end-board quality. The closing power comes from 3000-ATK Fusion bosses and Vidolium, but the score is held back by a 40/15 list with 32 off-archetype copies (Power Patron, Dominus, Forbidden and tech cards diluting the engine) and by the absence of any Side Deck. Popularity in the archetype (the core cards appear in most archetype builds) confirms the list is real but did not add points; the score was built from the system, not from averaging card scores.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: 0.85 Midrange / 0.15 Toolbox. Structural ≈ 59, Going First ≈ 58, Going Second ≈ 62, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 55. Modifiers: Engine dilution from off-archetype copies (-2); No Side Deck (-1); Limited-card exposure (0). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability + ContextModifiers (Meta provisional, no dated metagame)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.34 · key two-card combo ≈ — · full-brick estimate ≈ — (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Core archetype set appears in essentially every opening hand
• Dense layered interaction (five hand traps plus negation and removal spells)
• Strong 3000–5000 ATK Fusion and Pendulum closers
• GY-based recursion refills the board after a clear

Weaknesses

• Off-archetype dilution: 32 of 40 main copies are not Darklord-named
• No Side Deck, so no adaptation between games
• No measured combos or win-rate data to confirm the ceiling
• Heavy Extra Deck reliance on three Darklord Fusions

Critical choke points

• Darklord Dance (single copy) is the only route to several Fusion boss summons
• Single-copy Limited Maxx C and Herald are lost to a single removal or Limited slot change

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legal in master-duel: main 40, extra 15, side 0; banlist statuses for Crossout Designator, Herald of Orange Light, Maxx C and Super Polymerization; Exact archetype purity 41.8% with 32 off-archetype main copies; Core card inclusion for Darklord Contact, Djehuty and Maxx C from usage statistics
• Inferred: Starter opening-hand probabilities (≈0.34 per three-copy starter, 0.9996 for the archetype core); Hand-trap probability ≈ 0.58 going second; Interaction density and negation/removal coverage from card text; Going-first and going-second power splits from the rubric dimensions
• Provisional: Meta Power (null, no dated metagame sample); Matchup fit (no tournament link)
• 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 deck title is null in the export