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

• 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). Guide has been updated to include notes, combos and decks based on the Skill, as well as moving/adding cards into various sections based on their updated inclusion/viability.

• 9th of September 2024, Loading... was added to the game as well. Due to current Skills not allowing DARK Dragons, it is mentioned in this guide as an unusable card.

• 9th of September 2024, a 6th Extra Deck slot that players start with was added, increasing the maximum amount of Extra Deck slots you can have to 9! All Base Decks have been updated to reflect this.

• 8th of October 2024, Bane of Darkness had its text updated to allow Level 7+ DARK Dragons with 2400 or less ATK, meaning that Loading... is now playable in this Skill. Guide has been updated to include this card, 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.

• 5th of December 2024, a Forbidden/Limited List was implemented that set Loading... to the Forbidden status. As such, a deck that featured this card has been swapped out with a deck that is more accurate to the Forbidden/Limited list. Additionally, a couple of cards have been moved around based on card usage and playability, as well as more cards being added to the guide based on community recommendations!

• 24th of February 2025, a F2P section has been added to include an example of each Skill that works within F2P limitations as well as advice about Dream Tickets.

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!

The second part of the effect requires you to control Loading... . If you do, you can add 1 Loading... from your Deck or GY to your hand. This lets you easily retrieve your means of Fusion Summoning Loading... and aggressively attack your opponent. An important note about this part of the effect to keep in mind: The Deck is not shuffled afterwards, even if you add Secrets from your Deck. Use this knowledge to your advantage!

Battle Chronicle