Dark Magician: deck recipe [July 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Note by Milan:

This deck is perfect because you do not need any extra deck and plus you can make some rly good combos with dark illusion and raigeki. It works very well in current meta and can stomp everything from cyrstrons to shiranui and even mirror matches. Consistent, competitive, fun. No need to explain how to play dm since im pretty sure the majority knows how it works. I reached kog in a few hours just under 75 duels. Good luck and have fun!

Noted by Pduque13:

"It is the fifth season I reach KOG with Dark Magicians, and it was the fastest one. I didn't fall from any rank, and it took me only 48 victories to reach KOG. The skill Balance reduces to almost zero any chance of brick! Also, TTH works very well with Canadia and Navigation. Extra deck is just for bluff. This deck is very traditional, but OP as a new one!

As usual, thanks a lot for your attention and all the help you guys at Gamea give for us F2P duelists!"

Note by Inthan:

Karma cut and raigeki break are really Good in the current Meta. This Deck can rush through anything Even on Turn 2!!

Note by BlueDelta:

"Strategy:

Since Cosmic Cyclone is such a flexible Quickplay Spell, i finally went for a triple version setup. Very useful in the Mirror Match to disable Dark Magical Circle, if you set it on Turn 1 your opponent won’t even get so search/rearrange. Additionally it helps out versus any backrow heavy deck.

I left out Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer for this season, as i did not encounter many Shirunai Decks. Only 1 Magician of Dark Illusion as 2 felt too bricky. The lack of Eye of Timaeus can cause certain Duels to be Autolosses e.g. Invoker with Cocytus, but Monsters with such a degree of protection (immune to destruction by card effects and – in this case more importantly targeting) are rare, but it also helps with consistency as it sadly cannot be searched by Rod or Circle.

Last but not least i wanted to change up my Traps besides Navigation as Floodgate Trap Hole can be a bit situational at times. Raigeki Break is a very good Trap, but personally i don’t want to invest any Gems into Shirunai, that’s why i went for Countertraps with a discard cost. Primary targets for discards are Spare Navigations, discarding Dark Magician is also fine, especially if you are still able to use the Special Summon effect of Magician of Dark Illusion or you haven’t used Illusion Magic yet. Triple instead of double Divine Wrath would probably have been better, but filling up the final slot with one Ultimate Providence worked just fine. In some cases Divine Wrath / Ultimate Providence works even better than Raigeki Break or Ballista Squad as they negate on top of destruction, disabling lots of relevant effects like searches, Special Summoning, Destruction / Banish, etc.

I tried „The Tie that Binds“ for some Duels, but it did not add much of value for me so i stayed with Balance."

Note by Prof. Xavier:

"Curtain and Veil, because they give more options when going second, which the deck lacks.

Raigeki Break would ideally be Karma Cut, but it does the job of helping BEWD and Blackwings matchups, which are tough. The discard cost plays very well in the deck.

Night’s End Sorcerer over Kycoo because of BEWD, while still retaining value against Shiranui (even though it’s considerably worse). Synchro package is also good against BEWD and Blackwings, though, ideally, Vermillion Dragon Mech and Crystron Ametrix should be there. DM plus Sorcerer is one of the best plays when you don’t have Circle.

Born from the Earth because of BEWD and Blackwings, which all have high attack monsters.

Final note: Playing Eye of Timaeus is, in my opinion, one of the greatest traps you can fall into with this archetype."

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