Dark Magician Deck #773957 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 54/100 (±7 · Confidence: Medium)

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

Legality

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

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Summon Dark Magician or Dark Magician Girl, fuse or ritual into Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Dark Magician the Dragon Knight, Master of Chaos, or Dark Magician of Destruction, and protect the board with Eternal Soul and Magicians' Combination.; Shining Sarcophagus package with Dark Magician Girl the Magician's Apprentice, Gandora-G, and Dark Magician the Magician of Black Magic; trap-based control with Dark Magical Circle, Magician Navigation, and Eternal Soul.
• Turn 1 (going first): Open a Dark Magician engine card, establish Dark Magical Circle and/or Eternal Soul, then convert into a fusion boss such as Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon or Dark Magician the Dragon Knight with backrow interaction.
• Turn 2 (going second): Use six-card hand access to board breakers such as Dark Magic Attack, Gandora-G, Master of Chaos, Underworld Goddess, or Dragoon's destruction effect, then close with 3000 ATK bosses.
• Recovery: Grind with Eternal Soul, Magician's Salvation, Soul Servant, Dark Magical Circle, and The Dark Magicians to recur Dark Magician and draw/search into follow-up.
• After siding: No Side Deck is present; the deck has no dedicated post-side configuration or matchup-specific adaptation data.

Why it scores here

This Dark Magician list earns a mid-range score because its engine access and search density are real, but the system is stretched across Dark Magician, Shining Sarcophagus, Prophecy, Chaos, and Legendary Knight pieces with 14 one-ofs. It can open a functional starter often enough, and its ceiling includes Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Dark Magician the Dragon Knight, Master of Chaos, and Eternal Soul-backed trap interaction, but there are no recorded combo boards and the realistic median is a modest boss plus limited backrow. It grinds well through Eternal Soul, Salvation, Soul Servant, and The Dark Magicians, yet it has no hand traps, few true extenders, and several conditional garnets that make one interruption or a poor opening hard to recover from. The score is not an average of card scores, and Dark Magician's popularity or the usage statistics did not earn points; those stats are context only and partly conflict with the resolved Extra Deck. No dated metagame sample exists, so Meta Power remains provisional and the final score is driven by structural consistency, resilience, and reliability.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: 70% Midrange / 30% Control. Structural ≈ 58, Going First ≈ 63, Going Second ≈ 62, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 56. Modifiers: Mixed-engine / one-of variance (-2); Conditional garnet burden (-2). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability (Meta provisional) + modifiers

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.85 · key two-card combo ≈ 0.35 · 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

• High boss ceiling with Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Dark Magician the Dragon Knight, Master of Chaos, Dark Paladin, and Underworld Goddess.
• Strong recursion and grind tools in Eternal Soul, Magician's Salvation, Soul Servant, Dark Magical Circle, and The Dark Magicians.
• Dense search suite (14 search-text cards) gives many ways to access the Dark Magician engine.
• Trap-based interaction and protection from Magicians' Combination, Magician Navigation, and Eternal Soul.
• Flexible Extra Deck fusion options answer different board states.

Weaknesses

• No recorded combo lines; ceiling and floor are text-inferred rather than observed.
• Very high one-of count (14 distinct one-ofs) and mixed Shining Sarcophagus/Dark Magician packages reduce coherence.
• No hand traps and few true extenders; one well-placed interruption can stop the turn.
• Several conditional cards can be dead or low-impact, including Illusion of Chaos without Chaos Form, Dark Magic Attack, Gandora-G, and Dark Magician Girl.
• No Side Deck and no post-side adaptation data.
• Usage statistics conflict with the resolved card list for several Extra Deck cards, lowering confidence in archetype-core comparisons.

Critical choke points

• Normal Summon Magician's Rod or Dark Magician Girl the Magician's Apprentice can be negated, stopping the search line.
• Timaeus the United Dragon needs a Spellcaster or Dark Magician-mentioning Spell/Trap to send; opening Timaeus alone is weak.
• Eternal Soul leaving the field destroys all your monsters, creating a high-risk protection piece.
• The trap-control plan needs Dark Magical Circle and/or Eternal Soul to be live; without them the traps are slow.
• Illusion of Chaos is a Ritual Monster with no Chaos Form in the list, making it primarily a search body and potential garnet.

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legality: 30 Main, 9 Extra, 0 Side; no copy-limit or size violations (Verified).; All listed cards are Unlimited in the provided Duel Links ban field (Verified).; Card text excerpts are present for all resolved cards (Verified).
• Observed: combo data contains 0 scored boards, so floor/median/ceiling claims are text-inferred rather than observed (Observed).
• Inferred: Opening starter access ~85% is a hypergeometric estimate from 13 starter-ish copies in 30 cards (Inferred).; Full-brick or low-impact-hand rate ~15% from 14 one-ofs and conditional cards (Inferred).; Ceiling includes Dragoon/Dragon Knight/Master of Chaos from card text, but conversion is unverified (Inferred).; Median board is a single boss plus limited backrow (Inferred).; No hand traps and few extenders make one interruption a common choke point (Inferred).; Grind game is strong via Eternal Soul/Salvation/Soul Servant/The Dark Magicians (Inferred).; Going-second board-breaking depends on setup-heavy cards (Inferred).
• Provisional: Meta Power is null/provisional; no dated metagame sample is supplied (Provisional).; Matchup coverage and format fit are provisional (Provisional).; Side-deck/post-side adaptation is unproven because no Side Deck exists (Provisional).
• 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 are Inferred or Unknown Meta Power is Provisional unless a dated metagame sample is supplied usage statistics conflicts with resolved card list for several Extra Deck cards (e.g., Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Master of Chaos, Underworld Goddess listed as missing/not in deck but present in cards[]); resolved list used no Duel Links skill is listed in evidence; skill effects cannot be evaluated