You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here

Contents hide Dark Magician decklist Main Deck Note On The Sidedeck The Most Important Dark Magician Cards The Extra Deck Dark Magician’s Gameplan Caution With Eternal Soul: Why is Dark Magician’s playstyle so popular? Should you go first with Dark Magician?

Dark Magician is an archetype with roots in the very first set of Yu-Gi-Oh! It is one of the most popular cards of all time thanks to its use by Yugi Moto in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime. Due to its popularity, Dark Magician has received a ton of support cards over the years to make it a formidable rogue strategy. While it never reached the highs of its Blue-Eyes counterpart, Dark Magician can still do a lot in the modern era. If you want to build the best Dark Magician deck possible without using a preconstructed Structure Deck, we have you covered with this guide. 

Dark Magician decklist

Main Deck

  • Apprentice Illusion Magician x2
  • Ash Blossom & Joyous Springs x3
  • Dark Magician Girl x1
  • Magician’s Rod x3
  • Magicians’ Soul x3
  • Timaeus The United Dragon x1
  • Dark Magician x3
  • Illusion Of Chaos x3
  • Allure Of Darkness x3
  • Dark Magical Circle x3
  • Magician’s Salvation x3
  • Preparation Of Rites x3
  • Secrets Of Dark Magic x1
  • Soul Servant x3
  • Eternal Soul x2
  • Infinite Impermanence x3
  • Extra Deck:
  • Master Of Chaos x2
  • Quintet Magician x1
  • Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon x2
  • The Dark Magicians x2
  • Ebon High Magician x1
  • Ebon Illusion Magician x1
  • Accesscode Talker x1
  • Black Luster Solider – Soldier Of Chaos
  • I:P Masqurena x1 
  • Knightmare Phoenix x1
  • Knightmare Unicorn x1
  • S:P Little Knight x1
✓ Johnny’s Annotation

Note On The Sidedeck

Since sidedecks change as the meta does, it is impossible to provide a proper sidedeck as it’s built based around what are the best decks which change frequently (as well as the meta of where you play the game). Generally, it is good to include spell and trap card hate in the case of playing against a deck using floodgates that prevent you from playing your deck. 

The Most Important Dark Magician Cards

You are never actually normal summoning Dark Magician and are always cheating it out from the deck. One of the best ways is with Magicians’ Souls. This can directly special summon a Dark Magician or Dark Magician Girl from the graveyard, which its first effect can setup for. Alternatively, you can special summon Magicians’ Souls to send spell and trap cards to the graveyard to get card draw. 

The only card you are ever actually normal summoning is Magician’s Rod. When you do normal summon it, you can add any spell or trap card that lists Dark Magician in its text. This is the wide majority of your spell and trap lineup, so you can get whatever backrow card you need for any given gamestate. Since every other card in your deck can be special summoned, you only want to use your normal summon on Magician’s Rod unless you’re very desperate for a monster. 

Your main boss monster from the main deck is going to be Illusion Of Chaos. It’s a Ritual monster that you will be summoning with Secrets Of Dark Magic. While this is the only way in the deck to ritual summon, there are many ways to search Secrets Of Dark Magic directly (such as with Magician’s Rod). Even though you only get the one ritual summon, Preparation Of Rites is a way to not just search out Illusion Of Chaos, but get Secrets Of Dark Magic back into your hand. Illusion Of Chaos in the hand is also a free search for Dark Magician or any monster that mentions it (though you have to put a card from your hand on top of the deck). This provides much-welcomed consistency to the Dark Magician strategy. On the battlefield, it can bounce itself back to the hand to negate a monster effect that was activated and bring back a Dark Magician from the graveyard. 

There are many cards in the deck that put cards on top of the deck. Dark Magical Circle is a way to get them back into the hand. When you activate it, you can reveal one card that is Dark Magician or a spell and trap card that lists it in the text. Afterward, anytime you summon a Dark Magician, you can banish any card your opponent controls. 

The Extra Deck

Inside the Extra Deck, there is a mixture of Fusion, Xyz, and Link monsters. Master Of Chaos is the most notable as it is a one-sided board wipe that banishes all your opponent’s monsters by tributing a light and dark monster. Although Timaeus The United Dragon is the only light monster in the deck, you really only need to use Master Of Chaos’ effect once to be able to close out a game due to how fast Yu-Gi-Oh! is. 

Another use for Timaeus The United Dragon is to make Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon. It comes with a lot of protection, being unable to be targeted or destroyed by card effects. You also get a free pop on your opponent’s monster for no cost, and get to burn the opponent for that monster’s attack stat. If you discard a card, you have access to an omni-negate that also boosts the stats of Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon. 

The Dark Magicians provides a draw engine that triggers whenever a spell or trap card or effect is activated. This includes both you and your opponents so you can force the activation to occur. This isn’t a hard once-per-turn either, meaning multiple copies will trigger the effect as well to stack them. This helps provide extra consistency through card draw along with Allure Of Darkness and Soul Servant in the main deck. 

The Ebon Magicians give you extra utility if you choose to make them. Both of them allow you to special summon Dark Spellcasters, something that Dark Magician cards are (though Ebon Illusion Magician can only summon Normal Spellcasters). Both of them can summon directly from the deck, which is one of the best effects you can ask for as you don’t need the card in your hand to utilize the effect. 

As for the Link monster lineup, since Dark Magician has extra space it uses a toolbox of Link monsters to help with any given gamestate. Knightmare Phoenix and Knightmare Unicorn help to get rid of problem cards by destroying them or shuffling them away respectively. Selene, Queen Of The Master Magicians provides consistency by letting you special summon a spellcaster monster from the hand or graveyard. This can be done as a quick effect, which helps to trigger Dark Magical Circle on your opponent’s turn to banish their cards. 

Both I:P Masquerena and S:P Little Knight can be used as interruption tools. Dark Magician does not come with many negates, so these are a way to stop your opponent in their tracks by quick effect removal. S:P Little Knight makes it tricky for your opponent to activate an effect as you can banish a monster on both fields until the end step to cut off an important combo piece. I:P Masqurena can let you link summon on your opponent’s turn into Knightmare Unicorn to shuffle away a key card before it gets used in the combo. 

Accesscode Talker is included in the deck as a game-ender, letting you wipe the field of monsters while going in for the OTK (one-turn kill) afterward. Black Luster Soldier – Soldier Of Chaos serves a similar purpose if you can’t use Accesscode Talker due to a low amount of Link monsters in the graveyard. 

Dark Magician’s Gameplan

Dark Magician is a deck where you want to deny as many resources your opponent has as possible. The deck utilizes quick-effect summoning to trigger Dark Magical Circle so you can cut off your opponent’s primary combo pieces. 

Dark Magician has plenty of ways to special summon multiple creatures a turn, allowing you to easily go into monsters in the Extra Deck. It has a large amount of draw power, something that is very good in Yu-Gi-Oh! as you can play a card as soon as it’s in your hand. 

While the monsters in Dark Magician decks don’t come with many negates, outside sources help to cover bases. Infinite Impermanence is a way to negate a monster effect for a turn and Ash Blossom And Joyous Springs can stop a monster from being moved outside of the main deck. These will be your two primary sources of interaction. Thanks to the draw power within the Dark Magician engine, it is rather easy to draw into them since you cannot search them out from the deck directly. 

Dark Magician is best when used as an OTK deck. It can easily amass a large battlefield while slowly banishing problem cards with Dark Magical Circle. It is rather resilient to negates, as there are many ways to special summon thanks to only Magician’s Rod being the normal summon. There are so many effects you can use, it can be hard for your opponent to know which is the right one to negate. Even if they do negate something, odds are you have another way to do what you were trying to do. 

When you are starting to go for your win conditions (OTK after wiping your opponent’s field), Eternal Soul is the bow that wraps it all together. It is searchable by most of the deck, and you can even set it directly with Magician’s Salvation. This is a way to control the board while you get ready to OTK with Dark Magical Circle banishes as it lets you special summon a Dark Magician from your hand or graveyard during either player’s turn. This is yet another way to special summon Dark Magician and Eternal Soul helps keep them safe as it prevents Dark Magician’s in the monster zone from being affected by your opponent’s cards. Although it can search for Dark Magic Attack or Thousand Knives, these cards aren’t worth running as there are simply better choices available in the modern game. You will always want to be special summoning Dark Magician regardless as its the cornerstone of the deck.

✓ Johnny’s Tip:

Caution With Eternal Soul:

While Eternal Soul is an amazing card, it comes with a steep downside. If it ever leaves the field, all of your monsters will be destroyed. It’s a high-risk, high-reward card that is often worth gambling with. Since Knightmare Phoenix can destroy it with ease, it is best to make sure two monsters never stick to the field at the same time as this can lead to Eternal Soul’s destruction and the destruction of your entire field. 

Why is Dark Magician’s playstyle so popular?

Dark Magician’s playstyle is an explosive one that if not checked, can easily win games. Its biggest downside is the lack of solid protection and negates within the archetype. The only archetypal negate is Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon and Illusion Of Chaos, making it tricky to stop your opponent from comboing off. However, the strengths of the deck let you clear the field with powerful wipe effects.

Should you go first with Dark Magician?

It’s usually better to go first with Dark Magician, as you can easily play through interruptions before your opponent as a chance to set up their field. Thanks to draw power, you can draw into your control cards to make sure they can’t set up at all. Another benefit of Dark Magician is that it is solid going second as well thanks to how good it is at dismantling boards, with multiple ways to do so. If any of your Dark Magician cards are left unchecked, odds are you can go in for the OTK as once Dark Magician gets going it can be hard to stop.

That’s the guide for the best Dark Magician deck you can build in Yu-Gi-Oh! There has been plenty of support for the archetype since the beginning, and there will likely be a lot of support in the future because of the sheer popularity of the archetype. While the deck isn’t meta, it’s still a meta contender as a rogue archetype thanks to how good it is at dismantling boards, something every deck can struggle against. Although it has its weaknesses, there are plenty of strengths to Dark Magician decks that make it a threat to the point every duelist has to respect it. 

About the Author

Johnny Garcia

Subscribe to our newsletters!

By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.

Share