Want to snowball advantage behind the iconic monster that started it all? Dark Magician is a competitive archetype in Trinity, and a great place to start off.

 

Pros:

• Snowbally

• Consistent value

• Good comeback potential

 

Cons:

• Weak against aggressive strategies

• Vulnerable to spell and trap removal

• Vulnerable to dead hands

Points: 4

Soul Servant: Two Extra Copies

Magikuriboh: 1 Point

Witchcraft Golem Aruru: 1/2 Point

Crackdown: 1/2 Point

 

General Strategy:

You ideally want to go first in Trinity's current climate and I would strongly recommend doing so. However, if you're on a suite of quick-play spells that can react accordingly to certain forms of interaction, you can definitely go second and crack open boards as well. Establish win conditions in the forms of Magicians' Combination, Dark Magical Circle, or just plain OTK potential with Piercing the Darkness and convert the snowball into a clean victory whenever you get the chance. You can establish layered defenses with Magikuriboh, Magician Navigation, Eternal Soul, Palladium Oracle Mana, Apprentice Illusion Magician, and Witchcrafter Golem Aruru. This ensemble of threats allow for even the simplest of gamestates to threaten a huge tempo swing!

Opening Plays:

You want to either enable The Dark Magicians Fusion monster early to cycle and get free card advantage while also threatening a tagout that enables a Magicians' Combination win condition, or pull off a Magician Navigation/Dark Renewal and summon Mystrick Hulder or Dimenson Conjurer and setup a snowball during the opponent's turn that has the potential to break boards wide open and generate resources at an alarming rate. Couple either of those openings with any additional backrow and you begin to establish layers that become more and more difficult to unravel without mass removal like Evilswarm Exciton Knight or Lightning Storm. With the addition of Illusion of Chaos, you can also establish a way to get to your setup, albeit two turns slower but with much more protection, by going into Lyna or Dharc. You simply summon Manju or Senju, pick up Illusion, then grab Souls and use it to send Mana to GY. If you go into Lyna, you get Aruru in rotation. If you go into Dharc, you get Magikuriboh or Rod into rotation. If your opponent targets your Link at all during that time, Mana and DMG are in rotation. It's great, but it doesn't actively advance your gameplan and is one of the weaker openers. If all else fails and you're going second, just summon Rod, grab Soul Servant, go to Main Phase 2, and Link Summon Clara. This at least gets you back Rod for next turn and stacks your deck. Though, you are basically surrendering your entire turn to setup for your NEXT turn.

 

Combos:
Meet Dark Magician the Dragon Knight and Eternal Soul. If you have both of these cards, your opponent will be unable to destroy either by card effect, as they protect each other. This allows you to constantly be able to revive Dark Magician for future plays. Soul Servant with any card that can draw, or with itself if you have the correct card in the GY, can add you the card you placed on top of your deck.

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Possible Modifications:

You can play The Eye of Timaeus and the respective targets of Dark Cavalry and Dark Paladin if you'd like. There's nothing wrong with doing that and the only reason they aren't included here is because the Eye just isn't searchable. When it does come up though, you can pop off pretty easily. Additionally, you can run Magician of Chaos and Chaos Form in order to be able to Ritual Summon Magician of Chaos and provide more pressure. If Magician of Chaos should fall, you can tag out into Illusion of Chaos (probably why it's a Ritual in the first place) to keep the pressure up, and in the event you would need to use Illusion's effect to negate something, you just tag right back out into the Magician of Chaos you had originally. It's quite potent.

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Written by Veiss Althen

Edited by WideWalrus