Dark Magician Deck #773677 — Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 28/100 (±6 · Confidence: Medium)

• Primary strategy: Midrange
• Secondary strategies: Toolbox, Combo
• Format: tcg

Legality

Main 45 / Extra 7 / Side 0 — status under the rules at evaluation time: Illegal. 1 violation(s).

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Ritual or Fusion Summon a Dark Magician-engine boss such as Black Chaos, Magician of Dark Chaos - Black Chaos, Black Luster Soldier or Master of Chaos, then press attacks with 2500 to 3000 ATK monsters; Dark Paladin and Dark Magician of Destruction as Extra Deck follow-up threats through Dark Magician and Light and Darkness Ritual recursion
• Turn 1 (going first): Turn 1 search and summon through Magician's Rod, Dark Magician Girl, Mulcharmy Fuwalos or Shining Sarcophagus, keeping Ash Blossom and Ghost Ogre up as hand traps for the opponent's first big interaction
• Turn 2 (going second): Use Ash Blossom, Ghost Belle, Ghost Ogre and Droll & Lock Bird to answer the opponent's first board, then rebuild with Black Chaos or Shining Sarcophagus-based searches
• Recovery: Ragged Records of Rites, Mind Shuffle, Skull Archfiend of Chaos and Light and Darkness Ritual recover Ritual monsters and staples from the GY and Deck
• After siding: No side deck is registered, so no post-side plan can be evaluated; the deck is locked to its main deck configuration

Why it scores here

The deck reliably opens a functional starter. Its searcher text covers 22 of 45 Main Deck cards, and the hypergeometric estimate of at least one archetype-core card in a 5-card opening hand is about 0.88 (Inferred). Its interaction package is dense, with 8 hand traps and 7 negation-text cards, so it can answer an opponent's first board for several turns. Its ceiling comes from the Light and Darkness Ritual boss monsters, which is a single-card conversion chain with no recorded boards to confirm it (combos_evidence is empty). The score is capped because the list is Illegal: Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring is run 3 times against a Semi-Limited limit of 2, so this is a theoretical structural read only. The score was not built from averaging card scores and was not raised by Dark Magician being a popular archetype (usage stats only confirm the list is real).

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Balanced. Structural ≈ 55, Going First ≈ 52, Going Second ≈ 58, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 42. Modifiers: Illegal copy limit (Ash Blossom 3 vs 2) (-10); Banlist exposure (Limited Droll & Lock Bird and S:P Little Knight, Semi-Limited Ash) (-4); No side deck (-2). Final formula: Illegal cap applied: 0.80*Structural(55) + 0.20*TournamentReliability(42) = 52.4, plus modifiers -16, capped to 28 as a theoretical-only score (Meta provisional)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.97 · 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

• Dense searcher text (22 cards) keeps the starter live early
• Layered hand-trap package (Ash, Ghost Belle, Ghost Ogre, Droll) covers multiple opponent turns
• Ritual bosses of 2800 to 3000 ATK provide a real closing threat

Weaknesses

• Illegal copy count on Ash Blossom caps the score
• Zero side deck removes post-side adaptability
• No recorded boards, so the combo ceiling and median remain unverified

Critical choke points

• Light and Darkness Ritual and Dark Magician access, since most engine cards need one of them
• Hand-trap density competes with starter slots, so the opening hand can go hand-trap-heavy

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Main 45, Extra 7, Side 0 against TCG size rules; Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring run 3 copies against Semi-Limited limit of 2; Droll & Lock Bird and S:P Little Knight are Limited at 1 copy each (legal)
• Observed: Usage stats show Dark Magician archetype core cards are commonly run (inclusion 70% to 100%)
• Inferred: Starter access estimates from hypergeometric draw tables; Hand-trap and removal density from card text; Boss-monster conversion from card text
• Provisional: Meta Power and matchup fit (no dated metagame sample)
• Data gaps: No combos supplied, so combo floor, median and ceiling are text-only inference No tournament link, so archetype meta-share and per-pilot record are absent No win-rate telemetry exists in YGOVN Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied No side deck registered