Shining Sarcophagus Deck #773969 — Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

Deck — Deck Power Evaluation

Final Contextual Deck Power: 59/100 (±7 · Confidence: Medium)

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

Legality

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

Identity & game plan

• Win condition: Resolve Shining Sarcophagus, convert it into a layered negate/disruption board (Turn Silence, Silent Magician Zero, Silent Swordsman Zero, Number 90: Galaxy-Eyes Photon Lord) and out-grind the opponent with a once-per-turn search plus 2500-3000 ATK closers.; Dark Magician / Timaeus fusion burst: The Gaze of Timaeus or Dark Magical Curtain turning Dark Magician the Magician of Black Magic into Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon (destroy + burn) or Dark Magician of Destruction.
• Turn 1 (going first): Open Shining Sarcophagus directly or via Dark Magician Girl the Magician's Apprentice / Future Silence, then Special Summon the mention-monsters (Gandora-G, Dark Magician the Magician of Black Magic, Archfiend's Advent) and hold Turn Silence or Silent Swordsman Zero as interaction; build Number 90 or Dragoon where the Extra access allows.
• Turn 2 (going second): Lead with the six main-deck hand traps (Nibiru, Mulcharmy Fuwalos, Ghost Ogre, D.D. Crow) to blunt the opponent's line, then use Gandora-G's field wipe, Dragoon's destruction, Underworld Goddess (uses an opponent's monster as material and negates all face-up monsters) and Archfiend's Advent's take-control to crack the board before swinging.
• Recovery: Shining Sarcophagus keeps searching every turn, Dark Magician of Destruction can Special Summon itself from the Extra Deck when a Spell is activated, Galaxy Journey revives a banished LIGHT/DARK (including a Gandora-G-banish line), and Witch of the Black Forest replaces itself when sent from field to GY.
• After siding: Duel Links ladder has no side deck (side_count 0), so adaptation happens through main-deck swaps of the hand-trap suite and the conditional one-ofs; no post-side performance data exists.

Why it scores here

Shining Sarcophagus is scored as a midrange system, not as a pile of good cards: the engine group is dense (19 copies, ~99.7% to open at least one) but the genuinely 'live' turn-1 line - Shining Sarcophagus itself or Dark Magician Girl the Magician's Apprentice to fetch it - sits near 63% on five cards, so the floor is a modest two-interaction board rather than a fortress. What the deck does well is layer three different negate types (Turn Silence, Silent Magician Zero, Silent Swordsman Zero) on top of Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon and Number 90, then grind with a once-per-turn search plus Future Silence refilling to six. Going second it leans on six main-deck hand traps plus Gandora-G's field wipe and Underworld Goddess rather than on dedicated board breakers. Combos evidence is empty, so the ceiling and median are text-only inference and confidence is capped at Medium. The score reflects consistency, interaction layering and grind on the system; it earns nothing from archetype popularity or tournament share (no dated sample exists), and no individual card score was averaged in.

Dimension scores

How the score was computed

Strategy profile: Midrange. Structural ≈ 63, Going First ≈ 65, Going Second ≈ 64, Meta = provisional, Tournament Reliability ≈ 61. Modifiers: Dependence on a single engine card (-3); Hard-garnet / conditional body burden (-2); Engine compactness (1). Final formula: 0.80*Structural + 0.20*TournamentReliability (Meta provisional)

Probability & combo summary

• Opening a starter: P(≥1) ≈ 0.63 · key two-card combo ≈ 0.26 · 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

• Very high engine density: 19 core-package copies give ~99.7% to open at least one piece, and 10 searcher-text cards give ~89% access on five cards (Inferred).
• Three different negate types across three different card classes (Turn Silence on a monster effect, Silent Magician Zero on a Spell, Silent Swordsman Zero on a targeting effect) make interaction hard to play around with a single answer (Inferred).
• Genuine grind engine: once-per-turn Sarcophagus search plus Future Silence refilling both hands to six in the Battle Phase (Inferred).
• Strong closing bodies in a 4000-LP format: Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon (untargetable, indestructible, destroy + burn), Number 90: Galaxy-Eyes Photon Lord and 3500 ATK Chaos Angel (Inferred).
• Real going-second interaction suite: six main-deck hand traps plus Gandora-G's board wipe, Underworld Goddess and Archfiend's Advent's take-control (Inferred).

Weaknesses

• The 'live' turn-1 rate (~63%) is noticeably lower than the raw engine density suggests, because most payoffs require Shining Sarcophagus to already be face-up (Inferred).
• Eight distinct singletons create high hand-to-hand variance and several conditional high-Level bodies (Gandora-G, Dark Magician, Archfiend's Advent, Nibiru) that do nothing on their own (Inferred).
• Shining Sarcophagus is only protected from monster-effect destruction; Spell/Trap removal on it invalidates a large share of the hand (Inferred).
• Master of Chaos has no Chaos / Black Luster Soldier Ritual material in the list and Number 68: Sanaphond the Sky Prison needs two Level 8s while only Gandora-G is Level 8, so two of nine Extra slots are rarely usable (Inferred).
• No side deck exists in this format, so the deck cannot transform for a bad matchup (Verified for side_count 0; consequence Inferred).

Critical choke points

• Shining Sarcophagus itself: remove or negate it and Gandora-G, Dark Magician the Magician of Black Magic, Archfiend's Advent and all three Silent negates stop functioning.
• Dark Magician Girl the Magician's Apprentice is the only main-deck card that converts into Sarcophagus from a non-Sarcophagus hand; negating its search strands the hand.
• The Timaeus line needs Dark Magician the Magician of Black Magic on field plus The Gaze of Timaeus in hand - a two-card, two-one-of requirement.
• Gandora-G's wipe costs half the LP, which is a large fraction of a 4000-LP life total if the follow-up does not close.

Recommended changes

Evidence & confidence

• Verified: Legality: 30 Main / 9 Extra / 0 Side within Duel Links caps; zero violations under the BanDuelLink field.; Galaxy Journey is Limited (1 copy run, legal) and Photon Jumper is Semi-Limited (1 of 2 allowed, legal).; Card texts for all 27 resolved cards, including material requirements on Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Master of Chaos and Dark Magician of Destruction.; Side deck count is 0 in a format whose side cap is 9.
• Observed: Archetype usage statistics: 22 cards at >=50% inclusion, e.g. I:P Masquerena / Underworld Goddess / Number 90 / Dark Magician of Destruction at 100%, Shining Sarcophagus at 73.9%, Future Silence at 56.5%.; Deck composition: 18 distinct Main Deck cards, copy histogram 8 singletons / 8 pairs / 2 triples.; Zero scored combo boards in combos_evidence (total_combos 0).
• Inferred: P(live starter) ~ 0.63 and full-brick band ~ 0.15 from hypergeometric maths on the resolved 30-card list.; Median board is Sarcophagus + one mention-monster + one set Turn Silence, giving roughly two interactions.; Master of Chaos and Number 68: Sanaphond the Sky Prison are near-unusable with this material set.; Removal of Shining Sarcophagus strands a large fraction of the hand.
• Provisional: Meta Power is null: no dated metagame sample was supplied.; Matchup Coverage & Format Fit is scored from the archetype's interaction profile, not from measured representation.; Side Deck Adaptability is effectively not applicable in this format.
• Data gaps: No combos supplied - combo floor, median and ceiling are 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. usage_statistics marks 8 Extra Deck cards (I:P Masquerena, Underworld Goddess, Number 90, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon, Dark Magician of Destruction, Number 68, S:P Little Knight, Chaos Angel) as 'in_this_deck: false' even though the resolved card list contains them - likely a zone-mapping mismatch; the resolved card list was treated as the source of truth. The single attached guide (id 1491) has an empty snippet and 0 sections, so no human strategic intent could be extracted.