Dark Magician Deck #773634 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 53/100 (±7 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Control, Fusion
• Format: duel-links

Legality

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

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Establish a Dark Magician protected by Eternal Soul and Dark Magical Circle, then close with a 3000 ATK Fusion (Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Master of Chaos or Dark Magician the Dragon Knight).; Mass-removal swing: Gandora-G or Dark Magic Attack clears the field, then the surviving boss attacks for game.
• Turn 1 (going first): Deploy a Dark Magician body with Dark Magical Curtain, Magician Navigation, Eternal Soul or Magician's Salvation, back it with Dark Magical Circle (search + banish) and set Magicians' Combination as the negation.
• Turn 2 (going second): Bait the opponent's negation, clear backrow with Dark Magic Attack / Navigation's GY effect, then Fusion Summon Dragoon or Dragon Knight with Timaeus the United Dragon or The Gaze of Timaeus and swing with 3000 ATK.
• Recovery: Magician's Salvation and Eternal Soul re-Summon Dark Magician from the GY, Soul Servant and The Dark Magicians draw back into the engine, and Magicians' Combination trades a body for a fresh one while negating.
• After siding: None — the exported list has a 0-card Side Deck, so no post-side configuration can be credited.

Why it scores here

This deck is scored as a system, not as an average of its card power and not because Dark Magician is a popular archetype. Its floor is a hand of conditional singletons: 14 of 21 distinct Main Deck cards are one-ofs, the best single-card opener (Dark Magical Curtain, 2 copies) appears in only about 31% of five-card hands, and the deck runs zero hand traps, so it cannot interact on an opponent's first turn. Its ceiling is genuinely strong for Duel Links — a Dark Magician made untargetable by Eternal Soul behind a Magicians' Combination negate and a Dark Magical Circle banish, closing with a 3000 ATK Fusion such as Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon or Master of Chaos. The median sits well below that ceiling because nearly every line is one card deep, the Dark Magician core and the Shining Sarcophagus package split the 30 slots without fully reinforcing each other, and there are no recorded boards to prove the ceiling is repeatable. Grind and recursion (Eternal Soul, Magician's Salvation, Soul Servant, The Dark Magicians) are the parts that reliably hold the score up.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: 70% Midrange / 30% Control. Structural ≈ 56, Going First ≈ 57, Going Second ≈ 54, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 52. Modifiers: Engine split (-2); Dead Extra Deck slot (-2); Above-average boss suite for the format (1). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability + ContextModifiers (Meta provisional, no dated metagame sample)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.62 · key two-card combo ≈ 0.12 · full-brick estimate ≈ 0.15 (all Inferred)
• Combo output: best PowerIndex —, median —, board-per-starter —
• Turn order: 0 going-first lines vs 0 going-second lines

Strengths

• Multiple distinct ways to reach a Dark Magician body: Dark Magical Curtain, Magician's Rod, Dark Magical Circle, Magician's Salvation and Eternal Soul.
• Strong protection and recursion suite — Eternal Soul makes Dark Magician untargetable/indestructible by the opponent, and Magician's Salvation re-Summons from the GY.
• Layered disruption at a full board: Magicians' Combination negate, Navigation's GY Spell/Trap negation, Illusion of Chaos's Quick Effect and Circle's banish.
• High-ATK boss suite for the format: Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon (untargetable, indestructible, burns), Master of Chaos (3000 ATK, banish-all), Dark Magician the Dragon Knight (3000 ATK, protects backrow).
• Real going-second blowout cards in Gandora-G and Dark Magic Attack.
• Soul Servant stacking plus The Dark Magicians and Soul Servant draws give the deck a genuine grind axis.

Weaknesses

• 14 of 21 distinct Main Deck cards are singletons; consistency rests on many 1-of and 2-of pieces.
• Zero hand traps and zero floodgates — no interaction on the opponent's first turn.
• Two sub-engines (Dark Magician proper and Shining Sarcophagus) compete for the same 30 slots and dilute each other.
• Dark Magical Curtain Special Summons for the opponent too and locks both players' effects for the turn, which can be a real liability going first.
• Dark Paladin occupies an Extra Deck slot with no Buster Blader in the list and cannot be Fusion Summoned.
• Eternal Soul leaving the field destroys all your own monsters, an inherent blowout risk.
• No Side Deck at all, so no post-side adaptability can be credited.

Critical choke points

• The single Normal Summon on Magician's Rod (1 copy) — negating or removing it typically ends the turn.
• Dark Magical Circle (1 copy) — the deck's main search and banish engine collapses if the activation is negated.
• Dark Magical Curtain hands the opponent a DARK Spellcaster from the Deck and negates both players' effects, so resolving it badly can lose the turn outright.
• Eternal Soul and Magician's Salvation are 1-of permanents; removing them cuts the whole recursion loop.
• Every Fusion line is material-specific (DM + Dragon, DM + Chaos Ritual, DM + LIGHT/DARK), so a single negated Summon of Dark Magician strands the Extra Deck.

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legality: 30 Main / 9 Extra / 0 Side, zero violations, zero restricted cards under BanDuelLink.; Card text: Dark Paladin requires "Buster Blader"; no Buster Blader exists in the resolved list.; Card text: Dark Magical Curtain Special Summons for both players and neither player can activate monster effects that turn.; Card text: Dragoon / Dragon Knight / Master of Chaos / Dark Magician of Destruction material requirements are all material-specific.; role hints: 0 hand traps, 0 floodgates, 0 tech cards in the list.; Usage statistics: 13 of 21 archetype core cards present; Magicians' Souls (82.8%) and S:P Little Knight (55.2%) absent.; Side Deck count is 0.
• Observed: combo data reports 0 total and 0 scored combos — no recorded boards to measure floor, median or ceiling.; Composition: 21 distinct Main Deck cards with copy histogram 14x1, 5x2, 2x3.; Archetype split: exact-name purity 48.7% against a spread that includes Shining Sarcophagus, Chaos, Prophecy and Legendary Knight.
• Inferred: P(>=1 effective Dark Magician starter in a 5-card hand) ≈ 0.62 after discounting conditions and Normal Summon conflicts.; P(Timaeus the United Dragon + Dark Magician in a 5-card hand) ≈ 0.12 for the key two-card Fusion line.; Near-dead-hand (brick) estimate ≈ 0.15 from singleton density and conditional cards.; Median board is roughly one Dark Magician plus Circle/Eternal Soul plus one negation; ceiling adds Dragoon.; Interruption resilience is limited because stopping the single Normal Summon or Curtain usually ends the turn.; Recursion via Eternal Soul / Salvation / Soul Servant is real but hangs on 1-of permanents.
• Provisional: Matchup and format fit — no dated metagame sample or tournament link was supplied.; Meta Power is null / provisional by rule.; Side Deck adaptability is scored on the absence of a Side Deck, not on measured post-side results.
• 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. Conflict in evidence: the resolved cards list includes Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Dark Magician the Dragon Knight, Dark Magician of Destruction, Master of Chaos, The Dark Magicians and Underworld Goddess in the Extra Deck, while usage statistics.missing core cards flags several of them as not in the deck; the cards array was treated as authoritative and confidence was reduced accordingly.