Dark Magician is an old archetype that recently got a very strong support card from the Future Horizon Main Box being Dark Magic Circle. The deck also had Magician Navigation introduced in the Guardians Of Rock Mini Box in May 2019. This deck revolves around summoning your Dark Magician with Magician Navigation and banishing your opponents’ cards with Dark Magical Circle while doing so, as well as being able to negate one of your opponents’ spells/traps by banishing Magician Navigation from your graveyard any turn after you had activated the navigation.

No Mortal Can Resist

No Mortal can resist has been the go-to skill for dark magician recently after the sealed tombs nerf, it allows you to stop decks that rely on graveyard synergy such as crystrons, shiranui, and thunder dragons after losing lifepoints usually through Cosmic Cyclone. Some people have had success with Dark Magic Curtain as well to trigger the skill while summoning a dark magician from the deck.

Balance

Balance is another skill some people prefer using, it gives you more consistency and it’s used to utilize drawing certain techs more often through the guaranteed spell/trap that balance gives you, this variant usually runs Wonder Wand to draw said techs by equipping it to your Magician’s Rod or Legion the Fiend Jester

Dark Magician (3x):

Dark Magician is your main boss monster and it’s considered core at 3 to maximize your chance of drawing it and special summon it using Magician Navigation.

Magician’s Rod (3x):

This card is necessary for every dark magician deck as it allows you to search any of your Dark Magician Spells/Traps to boost your consistency of having them in hand.

Dark Magical Circle (2-3x):

The most recent support card we’ve got for the deck. Ideally you want to run 3 but 2 can suffice as you can also search it with Magician’s Rod. It allows you to banish any card your opponent controls when you normal/special summon your Dark Magician through Magician Navigation, Magician of Dark Illusion’s 1st or 2nd effect, or just tribute summoning it.

Magician of Dark Illusion (1x):

Magician Of Dark Illusion is very useful in this deck and it’s usually the main target to special summon with Dark Magician when using Magician Navigation. it can also be special summoned on your opponent turn upon activating a spell/trap allowing you to trigger Dark Magicial Circle effect if you didn’t start with Magician Navigation. It’s 2nd effect is also very useful to special summon Dark Magician from your graveyard when activating a spell/trap or an effect to trigger your Dark Magicial Circle.

Magician Navigation (3x):

This is the main way to special summon your Dark Magician along with a Magician of Dark Illusion or a second copy of Dark Magician if needed. It also allows you to negate any spells/traps that threaten your Dark Magician.

Illusion Magic(1x):

Illusion Magic is needed at 1 to tribute Magician’s Rod to add 2 Dark Magician to your hand to make your navigation live, and it puts Magician’s Rod in the graveyard so that his effect can be used to tribute a Dark Magician nd add it back to hand to get another search.

Night’s End Sorcerer(0-1x):

This card has been very useful for dark magician in the current meta as it gets rid of a lot of problematic cards in the graveyard like The White Stone of Ancients, Shiranui Spectralsword, and it can be used against crystrons to banish Crystron Sulfefnir or level 3 none tuners to stop Crystron Citree from summoning Crystron Ametrix on your turn. It also acts as a synchro enabler with either your dark magician or Magician’s Rod to out problematic monsters.

Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer(0-1x):

Kycoo has fallen off in popularity lately because Night’s End Sorcerer has more utility in the current meta, however, this card still has some good use against decks that banish from their graveyard like thunder dragons and shiranui. Some people also use both night’s end with kycoo to have an answer to all the graveyard dependant decks.

Cosmic Cyclone:

Cosmic Cyclone is very good in this deck to get rid of your opponent’s cosmic cyclone so they can’t disrupt your Dark Magical Circle. It’s also nice to get rid of key backrow cards like The Sanctified Darklord and Cybernetic Overflow.

The Eye of Timaeus:

The Eye Of Timaeus can be a useful tech to summon Dark Cavalry against Elementsabers to have an out to their Invoked Cocytus as it can’t be targeted by your Dark Magical Circle. It’s only being run at one as it can’t be searched through your Magician’s Rod/Dark Magicial Circle

Dark Cavalry:

Your best fusion target to summon using The Eye of Timaeus. It deals with any problematic targeting cards such as Treacherous Trap Hole while giving you a big body on the board to get over other boss mosnters.

Dark Paladin:

This is another viable target to summon through The Eye of Timaeus but less useful overall. It’s better summoning this against a deck like darklords if you had cleared their board to stop them from coming back with Darklord Contact.

Amulet Dragon:

Amulet Dragon is rarely summoned over Dark Cavalry but it does have its use against darklords to banish Darklord Contact and Banishment of The Darklords after they had used their graveyard copy effects.

Dark Magic Curtain:

This card is very useful for going aggressive turn 2 by special summoning a Dark Magician from your deck after paying half your lifepoints while triggering Dark Magical Circle to banish one of your opponent’s cards. The main reason it’s not seeing a lot of play is that it restricts you from summoning anything else that turn(but you can still set). Therefore you can’t search it through Magician’s Rod then activate it on the same turn.

Dark Magic Veil:

Dark Magic Veil is a very good to trigger your Dark Magical Circle banishing effect on your turn by special summoning a Dark Magician from hand. Its main downside is being unsearchable and having bad synergy with Magician Navigation as using it turn 2 means you’re unlikely to have another dark magician in hand to activate the navigation.

Enemy Controller:

Enemy Controller is very useful in this deck not only for taking your opponents’ monsters to OTK but it also triggers your Magician of Dark Illusion 2nd effect by tributing a dark magician then special summoning him right back while banishing one of your opponents’ cards with Dark Magical Circle

Dark Magic Attack:

This card is very powerful against backrow heavy decks such as elementsabers and cyber dragons and you can easily search it through your Magician’s Rod

Treacherous Trap Hole:

Another strong semi-limited cards that just wins duels on its own, its very good in the mirror and against any synchro-based deck such as blackwings and shiranui.

Floodgate Trap Hole:

Floodgate is very good in dark magician as it tends to struggle vs synchro decks that swarm a lot such as crystrons and thunder dragons and flipping down the tuners permenantly is a good way to slow these decks down

Fiendish Chain:

Fiendish Chain is really strong in this deck to negate Aleister the Invoker and stop any fusions, and since it’s a continuous trap you don’t have to worry about Treacherous Trap Hole being dead after activating it.

Wall of Disruption:

A very strong defensive card in this deck as most people will prioritize using their backrow hate such as Cosmic Cyclone on your Dark Magical Circle then you can use this to protect your Dark Magician and go for game next turn on a weak opponent’s field.

Void Trap Hole:

This card has gained a lot of popularity lately after the release of Chaos Dragon Levianeer currently being run in thunder dragon decks. It has general use against most decks as it negates their boss monster then destroys it, and it also works better than Fiendish Chain in this deck since it doesn’t clog your backrow slots.

Synchro Package

Night’s End Sorcerer can be special summoned through your Magician Navigation to banish cards from your opponent’s graveyard which helps a lot vs decks like Shiranui, its also a tuner which allows you to synchro summon with your dark magician to deal with problematic cards or get over certain attack thresholds.

AndyTsang, Top 4 Meta Championship Series 29

No Mortal Can Resist

Yusei, 2nd place Meta Weekly 115

No Mortal Can Resist

Side Deck:

Monkey D Willy, Top 8 Meta Weekly 116

No Mortal Can Resist

Side Deck:

• Combos

Field:

1. On your opponent’s turn, tribute Magician’s Rod with Illusion Magic to add 2 Dark magician to your hand.
2. Activate Navigation to special summon Dark Magician from hand and Magician of Dark Illusion from the deck, activate rod’s graveyard effect to tribute your dark magician and add rod back to hand.
3. Circle effect activates in a new chain to banish one of your opponent’s cards.
4. On your turn normal summon your rod to search a second circle, which triggers your Magician of Dark illusion to special summon the dark magician in the grave and get another banish with your circle.

However in the 3rd step you can choose to activate Magician of Dark Illusion 2nd effect to special summon your Dark Magician back on your opponent’s turn. But this limits you to only 1 circle banish and clogs your board if you were to top deck another Magician Navigation.

• Tips:

If you’re playing in the mirror or against an esaber invoked deck, you can use Enemy Controller to tribute your Magician’s Rod to take the opponent’s spellcaster such as Aleister the Invoker, then activate Magician’s Rod graveyard effect to tribute their spellcaster and add itself back to your hand. Remember that both of Dark Magicial Circle’s effects are hard once per turn(HOPT) so you can’t activate more than 1 circle in your turn, and if you have multiple circles on the field you will still only get 1 banish per turn. Another general note is that if you use Illusion Magic on your rod with no Dark Magician in hand and the opponent uses Cosmic Cyclone on your Magician Navigation you won’t be able to use it. So it’s better if you activate your Illusion Magic on your turn and not set it(if you have no dark magicians in hand) to guarantee getting navigation off. Also if you have a rod with backrow (ex: Treacherous Trap Hole) and one of the combo pieces (Navigation or Dark Magician) turn 1, it’s sometimes better to just search the missing piece instead of searching Magician’s Circle against decks that can’t usually OTK you such as shiranui and elementsabers. as you can just search that circle on the following turn by tributing dark magician to add back Magician’s Rod to your hand, and the backrow should be enough to stop any threat from these decks. And a final note if you’re playing Night’s End Sorcerer is that it effect would miss the timing if you special summon him in a chain link 2 or higher with Magician Navigation. (i.e chaining a navigation to an opponent’s card or one of yours.)

Blackwings

This matchup is rather difficult for dark magician due to all the blackwing synchros having higher base attack then your dark magician, as well as Assault Blackwing - Raikiri the Rain Shower being able to clear your board.

Something important to note in this matchup is when you special summon dark magician through Magician Navigation, your Dark Magical Circle would resolve in a new chain therefore you can’t chain navigation to Black Whirlwind search to stop it.

If going 1st in this matchup with only a Dark Magical Circle and a Magician Navigation for backrow and the blackwing player activates Blackwing - Simoon the Poison Wind right away, you should chain the navigation to it. This way the Black Whirlwind would activate as chain link 1 then circle activates as chain link 2 and banishes it to stop their search.

However, if they have a Whirlwind already and then activate simoon and you don’t have backrow besides the navigation, it’s better to hold it till they summon the raikiri, same thing if they opened lvl 4 monsters + Whirlwind.

Sometimes the blackwing players would search simoon off the the Whirlwind expecting you to banish their monster right away, or keep a simoon in hand hoping you activate the navigation early, so it’s better using the navigation+circle combo when they have a raikiri and another monster out.

If going 2nd in this matchup with the circle+navi setup against a raikiri + Blackwing Tamer - Obsidian Hawk Joe you should toggle on on their turn and activate the navigation on their standby phase to banish their raikiri before it gets to pop your cards.

Power of Dark is the preferred skill in this matchup as it makes your Dark Magician bigger than most of their synchro monsters.

Side Deck/Tech Choices:

Blue Eyes

The blue eyes matchup is another coinflip dependant matchup where it can be really difficult when going 2nd against a Raigeki Break with a The White Stone of Ancients in hand unless you draw Cosmic Cyclone, on the other hand blue eyes usually doesn’t have t2 followup after you banish their monster with Dark Magical Circle.

There’s 2 key notes to maximize your winrate when going first in this matchup, the first is if they summon a The White Stone of Ancients turn 2 in attack position they likely have a Sage with Eyes of Blue in hand and you should use the Magician Navigation right away to banish that.

And the second one is using Night’s End Sorcerer. Since most blue eyes decks are running Cards of Consonance to special summon blue eyes during the end phase, In the end phase you will get a prompt before them to activate navigation special summoning dark magician and the sorcerer to banish the white stones in the graveyard.

If they manage to get a Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon out the main play to out it is using Magician Navigation to force its effect to tag out into Azure-Eyes Silver Dragon, then on your turn synchro summon a Giganticastle to out the azure dragon.

Side Deck/Tech Choices:

Cyber Dragons

This matchup is very favored for the player going 1st .if they go aggressive turn 2 with their Cyber Dragon Core and you sense a delay they might be holding a Cyberload Fusion in their hand so it’s better to take the damage and use the Magician Navigation in the end phase or in response to Cyberload Fusion if they decide to use it turn 2.

It’s important to note that the main card you want to negate with Magician Navigation is their Cybernetic Overflow so if they activate another trap like Paleozoic Canadia for example you can let it go and hold your negate for the overflow.(granted you have 2 dark magicians on the field).

If you’re going 2nd in this matchup and they have a Cybernetic Overflow set that would pop 2 of your cards, you should try to set 3 backrow if you can in order to have a live navigation after they destroy 2 of your backrow, if you decide to activate circle and set 2 you will likely get OTKed on the following turn.

Side Deck/Tech Choices:

Crystrons

Crystrons is often a hard matchup for dark magician because of Crystron Ametrix stopping your push and their easy access to Black Rose Dragon which is very problematic for this deck, another annoying card in this matchup is Crystron Impact which negates the targeting effect of Dark Magical Circle. However this can be played around if you have a Magician’s Rod in the graveyard through chain-blocking the impact by chaining the rod from the graveyard after you target one of the crystron monsters. Your main goal in this matchup is focusing on stopping black rose plays and Crystron Quariongandrax plays with the circle and utilizing the chain-block. You can also crash your Magician’s Rod into a Samurai Destroyer to get 1000 lp below them to be able to use No Mortal Can Resist on the following turn in case you didn’t draw a Cosmic Cyclone to proc the skill. Night’s End Sorcerer can be very useful in this matchup to banish the none tuners in the graveyard to stop Crystron Citree from being able to synchro summon on your turn. Another final note is if you didn’t open the combo and topped a Dark Magical Circle for the last missing piece of the combo, is to swing into the Crystron Citree first to force its effect and then use the Magician Navigation to banish what they summon.

Side Deck/Tech Choices:

Darklords

Darklords can be very annoying for dark magician as they constantly put out big monsters like Darklord Ixchel that dark magician can’t get over. Hence a lot of players prefer using the Power of Dark skill against them so that your dark magician has higher attack than all their monsters bar Darklord Desire and Darklord Morningstar (it also ties with Darklord Superbia). In this matchup it’s very important knowing when to activate your Magician Navigation if they have multiple monsters with higher attack than dark magician. For example if they have a nasten and a desire on board you’d let them swing with the nasten first then activate your navigation to banish the desire through Dark Magical Circle. It’s also important knowing what darklord monster to banish, if they have a nasten and a desire for example without a contact in the graveyard you would banish the nasten as desire is easy to out with your circle later on or through The Eye of Timaeus, but it always depends on the board state overall if their desire is more of a threat than their other darklords or not. Remember that The Sanctified Darklord can negate your Magician’s Rod but you can dodge the negate by chaining Illusion Magic or using Enemy Controller to take 1 of their monsters.

Side Deck/Tech Choices:

Dark Magician (Mirror Match)

Sadly this mirror match often comes down to who goes first with the Dark Magical Circle + Magician Navigation combo to then banish the opponent’s circle, however if you open the combo + Cosmic Cyclone you can just banish 1 backrow with that cosmic and the other with circle to OTK on the following turn. An important note in the mirror is that if your opponent summons a Dark Cavalry you can still banish it with circle if you have a Magician’s Rod in the graveyard and a navigation. You do so by activating navigation, targeting the cavalry with the circle, then chaining the rod’s graveyard effect to tribute a dark magician, since the targeting effect is chain link 1 and rod is chain link 2 the dark cavalry can’t negate that effect as the rod chain blocked it, you can do this same play against Red-Eyes Slash Dragon as well.

Side Deck/Tech Choices:

Invoked Esabers

This matchup is slightly favored for dark magician as you can negate their Invocation with Magician Navigation, however, sabers also have problematic cards for dark magician such as Invoked Cocytus, Elementsaber Lapauila which you should be careful of. Generally you run The Eye of Timaeus to deal with Cocytus through summoning Dark Cavalry and negating the aleister boosts. As for Lapuila you want to setup a double navigation against it so you can summon your Dark Magician through its negate. Also don’t activate Dark Magical Circle turn 2 against the lapauila as they’ll negate it right away. An important note in this matchup is that Palace of the Elemental Lords effect to send an elementsaber from the deck is only once per turn, so if the elementsaber player uses Elementsaber Molehu effect to flip down Magician’s Rod for example to protect his lapauila, you can activate the Magician Navigation without worrying about lapauila negating through palace. If you go 1st in this matchup with the setup and they summon Aleister the Invoker, banish it before they try to fuse through your circle.

Side Deck/Tech Choices:

Shiranui

This matchup can be a little annoying for dark magician going second due to this deck running a lot of backrow hate like Cosmic Cyclone, and Ballista Squad which also enables a synchro play from their graveyard on the following turn.

No mortal can resist is great in this matchup along with Cosmic Cyclone to manage to snipe one of their backrow hate cards. Overall it’s better holding the Magician Navigation and activating it in the end phase to summon Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer along with the dark magician, especially since they won’t swing if you don’t have monsters as that would just let you turn their graveyard into skull servants. However if you’re forced to activate it early due to a Cosmic Cyclone it’s better to just summon Magician of Dark Illusion so the kycoo doesn’t get destroyed right away.

Side Deck/Tech Choices

Ritual Beasts

This matchup can be very difficult for dark magician if the ritual beast player sets up his banish pile turn 1 with a Spiritual Beast Pettlephin setup for next turn. Power of Dark skill helps a lot in this matchup to make your dark magician bigger than their Ritual Beast Ulti-Apelio and it forces them to deal with the Yami to get over the dark magician.

When going 1st against ritual beasts if they open Ritual Beast Tamer Elder and a ritual beast, it’s best to banish their ritual beast with your Dark Magical Circle as soon as they summon it to stop them from fueling their banish pile and stop them from going into one of their fusions too. And if you have a Treacherous Trap Hole you can also destroy their two monsters right away without having to activate the Magician Navigation early. It’s important to notice what they search using the Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk. If they search a Ritual Beast’s Bond they can dodge the circle banish using the bond so it’s often better to hold the navigation until the battle phase to force a tagout and protect your Dark Magician.

If you can get another banish on your turn after they had tagged out your main target to banish should be Spiritual Beast Tamer Winda as it can float into Ritual Beast Ulti-Apelio which is bigger than your dark magician.

It’s important to note that if they try to bounce your Dark Magical Circle using Spiritual Beast Pettlephin and you chain Magician Navigation you won’t get the banish effect off as circle resolves in a new chain and it’d be in your hand when dark magician is special summoned. If you can’t manage to break their board (they did the elder cannahawk combos turn 1) you don’t have to play aggressive and overcommit, just chain your navigations when they try to bounce it,and keep trying to thin your deck to draw The Eye of Timaeus summoning Dark Cavalry as ritual beasts struggle to out it and it’s piercing effect is very strong against them as well.

Side Deck/Tech Choices

Thunder Dragons

Thunder Dragons are the hardest matchup for dark magician in the meta due to their constant swarming and floating as well as the ability to easily go into a Black Rose Dragon to wipe the field. Their new boss monster Chaos Dragon Levianeer can also clear a dark magician’s board without targeting.

This deck mainly runs a lightsworn engine with Charge of the Light Brigade and Raiden, Hand of the Lightsworn to put fuel in the graveyard for levianeer or to simply mill a Thunder Dragondark to revive it with Thunder Dragonhawk, so it’s better to banish that raiden right away, or if they have a dragondark + a tuner it’s best banishing that tuner as the dragondark being banished will let them search a Thunder Dragonduo.

Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer is very good in this matchup as it stops them from being able to summon Thunder Dragonduo and Chaos Dragon Levianeer as well as being able to banish tuners in their graveyard that revive themselves such as Glow-up Bulb, Plaguespreader Zombie, and Jet Synchron.

An important note in this matchup is when swinging into a Thunder Dragonroar and they float into a Thunder Dragondark after that, is to not attack the dark to stop them from searching, and since it will go back to their hand it’s not gonna be much use for them. However if they float into a Thunder Dragonhawk then it’s best to swing into it.

Side Deck/Tech Choices

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