Dark Magician - Failed Cards, Archetypes, and Sometimes Mechanics in Yu-Gi-Oh

Hearing Yugi shout "Dark Magician... DARK MAGIC ATACK " lives rent free in my head

"the last thing anyone does in yugioh is read so why would you force your monster to do it" dude you cannot come out of the gates with a banger like this

Dark Magician : *breathe TSX1 : BROKEN DARK MAGICIAN COMBO BEST DECK TIER 0 BROKE META

You forgot to mention Mahad's other downside that it has 3x to chance to be in your first hand if you have it in your deck

I have no clue how Konami can release generic cards thinking they will fix a specific archetype. It truly is like they've never played a card game before, let alone their own.

It's funny that the main weakness of dark magician is dark magician itself

Just a reminder to all people saying that this will trigger old school fans: It only failed in competitive tcg, a wagon most archetypes are already in. People play casual Yu-Gi-Oh for a reason.

I think the “the end board is always 1 piece away, even with a good hand” was the perfect way to explain the deck’s current situation. Great video. Nonetheless, it’s still my favourite deck. So we keep doing what we can with what we got.

Honestly, I love Dark Magician, Dark Magician Girl and all of their support, but I agree. Trying to establish a powerful end board is very hard and if I am going second, I might as well surrender if the opponent makes a half-decent board.

The biggest crime against Dark Magician was Konami being stuck up and having Magi Magi Magician Gal locked unless it got censored. God bless Kazuki Takahashi's soul for actually standing his ground and not seeing such a beauty changed.

it may be failed but in our hearts it succeeded forever...

One of dark Magicians biggest problem is the fact you have to run a level 7 vanilla monster that has become more and more worthless in the hand or on the field. Personally the deck needs an effect monster replacement to Dark Magician that is treated as dark magician basically everywhere to combo with the support, and has 1+ effects of the necessary spell cards on it. A dark magician that has the effects of dark magic attack and magicians combination on it suddenly means you need to run less DM cards, and the monster itself actually does something on field. The DM engine is so bloated because of the amount of continuous spells/traps you have to run. The deck has strong search and draw power, but because you have to see 4 cards for your endboard cutting the amount down would help immensely, and let you run more non engine to compete and die less to hand traps like ash blossom. I've been running this deck for years in the TCG and Master duel and that's the decks biggest lingering problem. Running branded cards helps you get your fusions more consistent, but can be resource intensive leading to weaker backrow end boards. Running it pure gives you a better backrow but less consistent extra deck plays, and since eternal soul is the linchpin of the deck you have to protect it and see it, or youre just ending on Dragoon pass (in TCG), which doesnt cut it usually. If I could give two support cards to DM to help them it would be making eternal soul 2 without the complete board wipe when removed, maybe it just destroys DM when removed since it was protecting them, or hell its 2024 give up the board wipe entirely. And giving us something like Eternal Dark Magician that's treated as DM in the deck, field, hand, and grave (or just make it always, no ones running both it and DM anyways) and give it 2 of the different DM spell/trap effects like a dark magic attack on summon to wipe backrow, and an effect negate as a tribute to summon a DMG from gy or deck, or something like DM circle on summon for the search and banish, giving you two targeted banishes when its summoned if youre running DM circle naturally. Support like this wouldnt make it a Tier 1 threat, but would actually help this aging deck become more usable .

The description of this video is the same description from the penguin video. Guys this does not deserve to be top comment.

One thing to mention is that when Dark Magician's main set of support was still new, the deck was prohibitively expensive. I remember wanting to build it at the time and gave up on it because it was just a fun rogue deck yet cost almost twice as much as full power Zoodiac at the time.

I know they don’t do erratas that buff cards, but I don’t see why Eye of Timaeus hasn’t gotten one that makes it searchable by soul servant or Dark magic circle.

I'm sure Triamids are an amazing addition to the failed archtype collection

Would be funny if one of these days they pulled a Flame Swordsman on Yugi's deck: That is, take one Monster he uses that has received little to no support. And then release a bunch of great support centered around it that makes it a decent deck much better than Dark Magician could be. Just like how despite Red-Eyes being Joey's signature Monster, Flame Swordsman in one support wave became way better than Red-Eyes has ever been.

If Eye of Timaeus was searchable by Soul Servant, and Dark Magical circle, it would honestly be a very consistent deck with extremely powerful endboards. The deck doesn't have a ton of searching capabilities outside of niche spells and traps

I’d be less upset about Dark Magician being a mid archetype if it were cheaper to build for what it is. It feels bad putting a list together and saying, “I could just play a better deck for the same price or less”

Ah yes, Dark Magician, my favorite Penguin Card