Dark Magician: deck recipe [Oct 2020]

When it’s Normal Summoned, Magician’s Rod allows you to add from your Deck to your hand a Spell/Trap Card that specifically lists the card “Dark Magician” in its text. You can use this effect to search Dark Magical Circle or Magician Navigation. If using a Silent Magician version of this deck, you can tribute Magician’s Rod for a Silent Magician.

If you don't have both Dark Magical Circle and Magician Navigation, prioritize searching Dark Magical Circle and then use that to dig Magician Navigation.

Magician of Dark Illusion's effect activates in response to your Spell/Trap activations letting you combo for field presence. Magician of Dark Illusions is a good monster to Special Summon from your deck with Magician's Navigation. This sets up for another Dark Magician summoning using Magician of Dark Illusion's effect with Magicians Navigation in your graveyard as trigger.

Dark Magical Circle's removal effect can be activated when you Special Summon Magician of Dark Illusion. Conversely Dark Magical Circle's removal effect activated during your opponent's turn can trigger Magician of Dark Illusion's summoning, or Magician of Dark Illusion's second effect if activated during either player's turn.

The Eye of Timaeus can be used on Magician of Dark Illusion. This will expend his second effect, letting you revive Dark Magician just before Magician of Dark Illusion leaves the field as fusion material.

Kycoo can pull monsters out of your monsters out of your opponent's graveyard to disrupt the graveyard set up of decks like Invoked Elemensaber and Lightsworn. This also serves to remove graveyard effects like Kiteroid and Plaguespreader Zombie. This is not quite as effective on Shiranui, unless you banish Shiranui Spectralsword, because you will be triggering their effects.

Kycoo's second effect is amazing for protecting your graveyard from banishing effects and preventing your opponent from using their own graveyard effects if the cost is banishing, almost like a mini Necrovalley effect.

Add Dark Magician to your hand and Special Summon it with Magician's Navigation. You can also fetch Magician's Navigation if you already have Dark Magician on hand. This combos well with Dark Magical Circle's second effect, letting you banish an opponent's card. Because Magician's Navigation is a Trap card, this combo can be used during your opponent's turn for disruption.

Special Summoning Magician of Dark Illusion with its own effect will also trigger Dark Magical Circle's banishing effect. Magician of Dark Illusion can, on a different turn, trigger Dark Magical Circle's removal again by reviving Dark Magician. You can use Dark Magical Circle's effect activation can trigger Magician of Dark Illusion to revive a Dark Magician.

If Dark Magician is already on the field, you can get Illusion Magic with Dark Magical Circle's search effect. You can fetch a second copy of Dark Magic Circle to be activated at a later turn. But keep in mind only one Dark Magical Circle banishing effect can be activated during a turn.

Magician Navigation allows you to Special Summon a Dark Magician from your hand and a Level 7 or lower DARK Spellcaster-Type monster from your Deck. Letting you get two Dark Magician on the field to use as beaters and field presence.

In the Synchro version of this deck, you can use Magician Navigation to Special Summon Night's End Sorcerer and banish up to two cards from your opponent's Graveyard, and then go into a Synchro Summon. Night's End Sorcerer's effect lets you get rid of graveyard effects like Bacon Saver and Kiteroid. You can also banish monsters to be used as cost for Masked HERO Koga,

You can banish Magician Navigation from your Graveyard to target a face-up Spell/Trap Card your opponent controls and negate its effects until the end of the turn. You can use this effect to prevent your opponent from searching a “Darklord” card via Banishment of the Darklords, Summoning Elemental HERO Brave Neos via Neos Fusion, or even from shuffling all of your Attack Position monsters into the Deck with Drowning Mirror Force.

Keep in mind that you can only activate this effect of Magician Navigation if you control a Dark Magician and you can’t do it during the same turn the Trap Card was sent to the Graveyard

The Eye of Timaeus targets a Dark Magician you control to make any of your Extra Deck monsters. This increases the power ceiling of the deck, but too many copies of Eye of Timaeus can hinder the consistency of your main strategy.

You can target Magician of Dark Illusion with Eye of Timaeus. This will let you revive a Dark Magician, while also replacing Magician of Dark Illusion with a much better beater with a disruptive effect.

Most of the time you will be summoning Dark Cavalry with Eye of Timaeus. His protection from targeting is arguably the most versatile among your Extra Deck monsters, capable of stopping most disruption. For added utility, you can also use this negation to stop your opponent from targeting their own monsters, stopping cards like Favorite Hero.

On top of negation, the ATK boost and piercing effect makes him good as a beater. Overall making him a huge threat onboard.

Unlike Blue-Eyes which relies on its Effect monster support, Dark Magician decks are able to bring out their boss monster with just their Spell/Trap support. This creates a niche where Heat Wave can be used to its full potential.

Activate Heat Wave at the start of the turn, and then Summon Dark Magician with Star Blast or Magician Navigation. Since most decks heavily rely on effect monsters, Heat Wave can preemptively shutdown your opponent's next turn.

Be careful to not use Heat Wave during the turn you want to setup with Magicians Rod.

You can Special Summon Silent Magician by Tributing a Spellcaster-Type monster you control. If you Tribute Legion the Fiend Jester to Special Summon Silent Magician, you will get to add a Dark Magician from your Deck or Graveyard to your hand, which will allow you to activate Magician Navigation.

Silent Magician is able to, once per turn, negate the activation of a Spell Card, which is particularly relevant in the current meta to negate Fusion Spells and other key Spell cards.

While its original ATK and DEF are definitely on the low side, thanks to its effect, Silent Magician can quickly become a pretty big threat, gaining 500 ATK for each card in your hand. Additionally, if Silent Magician is destroyed by battle or card effect, you can Special Summon from your hand or Deck a Silent Magician LV8, a 3500 ATK monster that your opponent cannot take control of via Enemy Controller and that also cannot be weakened by World Legacy Clash.

You can summon Dark Magician Girl with Magician Navigation. She isn't really good on her own, and her effect can only occasionally make her slightly stronger than Dark Magician.

Dark Magician Girl is best used as a target for Eye of Timaeus to make DMG the Dragon Knight. This makes her a boss monster with a decent removal effect and better base stats. You can choose to make DMG the Dragon Knight over your other Extra Deck monsters in situations where the opponent's problem card is already on the field. For example when your opponent had already equipped Favorite Hero to their monster, so in this situation Dark Cavalry and Dark Paladin can't do anything about it.

Dark Paladin is usually summoned against Fusion decks like Neos Fusion, Lunalight, and Invoked. Against these decks, preventing them from using their Fusion Spells essentially cripples their entire strategy. You should also watch out for Field Spells and Ritual Spells, since these Spells are also commonly key cards in their respective decks. In mirror matches, Dark Paladin is highly useful for negating enemy Dark Magical Circle and Eye of Timaeus.

Additionally there are also a bunch of decks rising in popularity that have key Spell cards in their strategy. These decks include Spellbooks, Witchcrafter, and Evil Eye.

Dark Paladin can also be summoned against Dragon decks because of his ATK boost, giving him a higher power ceiling than Dark Cavalry.

Note by KINGPLAYER:

"Main combo is the Interruption of the opponent with Circle and Navigation.

Kycoo proves to be MVP against so many decks, including shiranui, witchcrafter, Superheavy samurai, Magnets, Dragunity (they cannot trigger Ascalon‘s Effekt), Neos invoked (Cant banish neos fusion or use their graveyard for fusion summoning via invocation).

Dark magic expanded helped me against the mirror match and to get past stronger Monsters in the 3k attack Range.

And finally, the discard traps, in combination with Magician of Dark illusion can help you to get rid of 2 cards from your Opponent, if your Circle is on the field.

My prefered skill is The Tie that Binds over Balance."

Note by Prof. Xavier:

"This version forfeits Balance’s turn 1 consistency in order to have a more aggressive play when going second, being able to present an early Circle banish and even opening the possibility for turn 2 OTK (picking up a lot of free wins). Needless to say it can also cost you wins when you go first and Balance would put a very good trap in your opening hand.

With Circle opening, Veil/Curtain can provide a banish on the setup turn, while double Veil or Veil+Cyclone allow you to activate Born from the Earth and possibly win the game on turn 2. Keep in mind that Metamorphortress can be set, but not activated immediately if you played Dark Magic Curtain. Don’t be afraid to go Curtain, banish and tribute DM for Illusion Magic, to setup Navi for the following turn.

Raigeki Break is, imo, generally more powerful than the second Cosmic Cyclone, especially with Dark Magic Veil being able to summon from the graveyard. Still, it’s possible that Herald of the Abyss, or the extra Cyclone are better in this slot, in order to maximize turn 2 OTK potential.

Night’s End Sorcerer is, imo, better than Kycoo in the current meta and synergizes very well with Dark Magic Veil. When facing Lightsworn-based decks, BEWD or Infernity, being able to straight up banish 2 cards from the opponent’s graveyard can kill their combo on the spot. If Witchcrafters are not careful enough to keep a spell in hand for negating with Madame Verre, you can also snatch their spells EOT before they come back to the hand. It also retains some usefulness against Shiranui, though timing is much more important than when you would summon Kycoo. Finally, NES Synchro wins games you had no business winning, usually via 1 more destruction with Vermillion Dragon Mech (and putting DM in the grave to open another Circle banish through Veil) or added longevity with Azure-Eyes Silver Dragon. Keep in mind you should activate Born from the Earth while DM is still in play and Synchro after.

Born from the Earth is the preferred skill because of the added power needed to destroy multiple high-attack monsters through battle, which BEWD and Blackwings can easily present. Just be sure to activate the skill before sending DM away for Synchro summoning. This skill also wins games by allowing you to present 1 extra 3100-3900 ATK monster, which is often enough to win after minor damage from previous combats in that same Battle Phase, so don’t be afraid to suicide your Rods to free up a slot. It’s worth noting that while DM is equipped to Metamorphortress, you can still negate with Navigation, but the same is not true for Magician of Dark Illusion.

As a final thought, I would recommend that anyone who plays this deck remembers that the strength of DM decks still lies mostly in the ability to disrupt the opponent with Navi+Circle, so you should look to figure out ASAP what deck you are facing and know precisely when to activate Navigation on their turn (especially with NES) to disrupt them effectively. Know the meta and take notes."

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