Sometimes you just have to play a theme deck. One that isn’t a tier one competitor, but that will be fun and can be incredible to win with. An experienced player will often work at perfecting a second or third tier theme deck just for the sheer challenge, and there isn’t any better way to challenge yourself than to play a deck that you know has little chance of winning in highly competitive metagames.

Dark Paladin decks definitely fall into this category. Justin Besheuren played one at Battle City Amsterdam.

Monsters
3 Double Coston
3 Skilled White Magician
3 Skilled Dark Magician
2 Buster Blader
3 Dark Magician
3 Dark Magician of Chaos
1 Cyber Jar
1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

Spells
3 Fusion Gate
2 Dedication Through Light and Darkness
1 Harpie’s Feather Duster
1 Spiritualism
1 Change of Heart
1 Reload
1 Graceful Charity
1 Dimension Fusion
1 Heavy Storm
1 Dark Hole
1 Raigeki
1 Pot of Greed
1 Mystical Space Typhoon
1 Card Destruction

Traps
3 Negate Attack
1 Gravity Bind
1 Call of the Haunted
1 Dust Tornado
1 Imperial Order

Fusion
3 Dark Paladin

Double Coston is actually surprisingly playable, especially in an environment where you stand a good chance of not being attacked much in the first turn or two. It’s definitely easier to play in Europe than it would be in North America. Getting out Dark Magician of Chaos on turn 2 is great, and Double Coston, along with Dedication through Light and Darkness, can help that happen. Between Double Coston, Skilled White Magician, and Skilled Dark Magician, the deck is very quick at getting out higher level monsters.

The deck is high in tribute monsters, even by European standards. The three Negate Attack help, but I’d use Waboku myself due to their ability to be chained together. Warriors are popular in some parts of Europe and it’s possible that Tom has serious issues with Sasuke Samurai, which could potentially hurt this deck. The one Gravity Bind seems counter-intuitive to the flow of the deck, and with only one Mystical Space Typhoon and one Heavy Storm it’s feasible but not likely to bounce back a piece of spell or trap removal by summoning a Dark Magician of Chaos. Spiritualism is decent, but I think another Mystical Space Typhoon would have been a better use of the card slot.

The deck has a good amount of search and cycling, with Cyber Jar, Skilled Dark Magician, Skilled White Magician, Dedication Through Light and Darkness, and Reload all providing thinning and searching to get the deck to the cards it needs. With Witch of the Black Forest and Sangan possibly leaving some formats in the near future, cards like Skilled Dark Magician, Skilled White Magician, and Reload will all probably be seeing more play, and this deck is an interesting example of what approaches may look like in the future.