Dark Magician Guide

Overview

Dark Magician is an archetype revolving around the vanilla monster Loading... , the main ace of the characters Yami Yugi & Yugi Muto in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime. Within the past year, the archetype has gained various pieces of support, ranging from various new cards such as Loading... , Loading... & Loading... , to Skills such as Magician's Magic , Battle Chronicle & Bane of Darkness that make the Deck much more playable in the ever evolving meta game of Duel Links. Although the Deck is prone to various interruptions/counters and may not be considered to be very competitive by many, this guide aims to help those that are looking to improve their Dark Magician Decks and try new strategies to help push against all the odds and climb to the higher ranks. And most importantly, this guide aims to help others who are looking to have more fun with the Dark Magician archetype. Some abbreviations will be mentioned in this guide to shorten the guide a bit and help players become familiar with terms used by many DM players, so here is a quick Glossary of terms:

Glossary

Updated Guide Contents

On the 5th of July 2024, Bane of Darkness was released, along with the release of a Prismatic alternate art Loading... . The Skill provides players a brand new way to play Dark Magician, with a focus on getting either Loading... or Loading... onto the field and using them to either interrupt your opponent's plays (if you're going first) or OTK with them (if you're going second). After some play testing, King of Games grinding and deck submissions from other players, this guide has been updated to include various notes about the new Skill, as well as moving/adding cards into various sections based on their updated inclusion/viability.

On the 9th of September 2024, Loading... was added to the game as well. Being a DARK Dragon however and made usable in a Deck that doesn't need DM to be in said Deck, it isn't something Dark Magician can use properly. Nevertheless, it is mentioned in this guide as an unusable card.

With the addition of a 6th Extra Deck slot that players start with, the maximum amount of Extra Deck slots you can now have is 9! This change was added on the 9th of September 2024, so all Base Decks have been updated to reflect this.

On the 8th of October, Bane of Darkness had its text updated to allow Level 7+ DARK Dragons with 2400 or less ATK. Although this change means that Loading... is now playable in this Skill, it is not particularly recommended, as you would need to run cards that conflict with commonly used Dark Magician cards to make it work. Nevertheless, it is mentioned in this guide, but other cards associated with Buster Blader are not mentioned so as to keep this guide about Dark Magician. Various cards in this guide have also been added/shifted around based on card usage and playability.

What Skill to Use?

Before thinking of what cards you'll want to play, you'll need to first figure out which Skill you will be building your Deck around. Let's take a look at the 3 main Skills that many Dark Magician players are currently using:

Magician's Magic

Magician's Magic focuses on an aggressive attack style, encouraging you to constantly Fusion Summon and beat down your opponent before they have a chance to recover. This Skill can be used by Yami Yugi , Yugi Muto and Yugi Muto (DSOD) .

It has 3 different conditions that always apply during the Duel. Firstly, you can Normal Summon or Normal Set Loading... without Tributing any monsters, immediately opening up entire new strategies. Secondly, you are locked into DARK Spellcasters for the entire Duel. If any monster in your Deck/Extra Deck does not have both the DARK attribute and Spellcaster type, you cannot Summon those monsters. Monsters such as Loading... , Loading... & Loading... are not Summonable, so avoid including those cards if you're using this Skill. Thirdly, when it's your opponent's turn, you can only Special Summon Level 6 monsters from your hand OR GY. This means that cards like Loading... and Loading... , which function well on the field during your opponent's turn, are not going to synergise well with this Skill. However, Loading... can still be Special Summoned from the Deck. Keep this in mind for later on.

Now onto the Skill's effect. You can only the Skill's effect once per turn, and both parts of the effect can only be used once per Duel. The first part of the effect lets you return 1 Loading... , Loading... or Loading... to your Deck. In exchange, 1 Loading... will be added to your hand from outside of your Deck, and 1 Loading... will be added from your Deck to your hand. This will let you set up a way to interrupt your opponent (if you're going 1st), but can also create ways of attempting to bait out any negations/interruptions from your opponent so that you can continue playing unhindered. An important part of the effect you need to be aware of however, there must be at least 1 Loading... remaining in your Deck in order to activate this effect, otherwise the game will not let you activate it!