After months of lying dormant (save for a few rare side deck spots for either Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World or Sillva, Warlord of Dark World), the cohesive Dark World theme finally emerged at Shonen Jump Championship Anaheim. Both Tim Perry and Theeresak Poonsombat decided to use Dark World themes, albeit with different focuses.

Now that two powerful builds have emerged—one with the Deck Devastation Virus strategy present and one without—I’d like to create my own take on Dark World. Since this creation will focus entirely on the theme, you can expect to see more flavor cards thrown in for good measure.

Creating Advantage through the Dark World Theme

Dark World is known for providing extremely powerful sources of special-summon swarms and anti-hand disruption. Most of the good Dark World monsters are linked to these combined effects, since the spell and trap support specifically coded for the theme in Elemental Energy works toward special summoning as well.

Unfortunately, the deck has been plagued by inconsistency issues since the dawn of its release. While the triumvirate of power cards in the deck—Graceful Charity, Card Destruction, and Morphing Jar—can turn any terrible tribute-clogged hand into an instant winner, many games can end prematurely due to terrible hands. You can see an example of this in Paul Levitin’s feature match. His inability to draw into support cards made his hand full of Dark World monsters nearly unplayable.

Dark World, while highly playable and adapted to the Spirit Reaper/Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch metagame, suffers from the tendency to approach each duel with brute force rather than finesse. You’ll often find that games involving Dark World are either fortuitous bursts where incredibly good set-ups lead to huge leads and easy wins, or the more common games where your opponents refuse to play to your strengths, leading to hands full of unusable monsters.

The goal of our New Grounds deck is to create a Dark World theme that can exist competitively without having to draw into Graceful Charity or Card Destruction every game, by creating good monster choices that lend synergy to the concept. The absolute strengths of the theme, which are special summoned monsters and a counter to hand disruption, can be harnessed while shoring up the deck’s natural weaknesses.

Build: Dark World

General Synergies and Goals:

1) Draw support that lends itself well to Dark World monsters.

Pivotal Cards:

1) The DW Trinity (Graceful Charity, Card Destruction, Morphing Jar).

2) Tools that can help find these effects.

Constructing the Monster Line-up for the Dark World Theme

We can separate the list into monsters that provide synergy with Dark World, and general support.

Dark-World Based Support:

3 Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World

3 Sillva, Warlord of Dark World

3 Broww, Huntsman of Dark World

3 Magical Merchant

1 Morphing Jar

Generally for Dark World monsters, I’m not pleased with anything other than these big three. Brron, Mad King of Dark World is an underwhelming monster in the face of Cyber Dragon, and even the 2300 ATK values of the Dark World monsters aren’t enough to hold up against a Monarch-dominated environment.

However, the 2300/1400 Goldd and Sillva are too powerful to ignore. Broww is a great third option for synergies with Card Destruction and other discard effects as well. The three copies of Magical Merchant can help lead to great spell or trap support for our strategy, and Morphing Jar is the most integral monster in this deck, period.

General Support:

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Sangan

1 Treeborn Frog

1 Magician of Faith

1 Night Assailant

3 Cyber Dragon

2 Mobius the Frost Monarch

Most of the monster selections here are self-explanatory. I must add that we’ll include three copies of Cyber Dragon to stabilize the field. It’s a great tool for eliminating pesky monsters such as Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive. The two copies of Mobius will help stabilize against bad situations as well.

The Spell and Trap Support for the Dark World Theme

Of my favorite six, we’re going to use five. We’ll omit Confiscation because simplified game states are not what we intend. For example, if your opponent has a set monster that you read to be a solid attacker, you’d rather have a monster in hand that’s usable than a Confiscation that can eliminate one of the opponent’s in-hand threats. The reason, of course, is that Dark World tends to draw a lot of bad hands and life point costs aren’t exactly synergetic.

Graceful Charity

Mystical Space Typhoon

Nobleman of Crossout

Heavy Storm

Premature Burial

The themed spell base is far more complicated and will provide the backbone of the entire theme.

Themed Spell Support

2 Dark World Lightning: One is too few, three seems to be inconsistent, and two copies of Dark World Lightning seems just right. Remember, you generally want to play this on monsters, since cards like Mystical Space Typhoon, Scapegoat, Call of the Haunted, Royal Decree, Dust Tornado, and Ring of Destruction can be chained to ruin your day. It’s very crucial that your Lightnings do not fizzle against your opponent’s sneaky tricks. So target the opponent’s monsters most of the time!

1 Card Destruction: Along with Graceful, this card will significantly increase your chances of winning. In fact, it’s the entire reason we’re playing three Magical Merchant cards. Drawing this card increases your win rate.

1 Pot of Avarice: Between Morphing Jar, three Magical Merchant cards, and Card Destruction, it would be foolish not to run this incredibly useful card.

1 Scapegoat: This beloved quickplay spell is used as a means to stabilize the field and give you a few turns to develop resources without worrying about setbacks.

1 Book of Moon: I think every deck running both Morphing Jar and the maximum copies of Magical Merchant should use this card. The ATK value of Merchant is far too low to leave it out in attack position with no chainable backup.

Onward to the common traps!

Mirror Force

Ring of Destruction

Torrential Tribute

Again, for synergy reasons, we’ll cut Call of the Haunted. It doesn’t mix well with Treeborn Frog and does not have power targets such as Dark Magician of Chaos, Jinzo, or Airknight Parshath to summon. While 2400 and 2300 ATK monsters are decent choices, its lack of utility in the early game dooms it to a spot on the bench.

The themed trap support looks like this.

Themed Trap Support:

1 The Forces of Darkness: I really like this trap card in our build. Again, the same cards that helped justify the usage of Avarice also lend themselves well to this trap. You can chain it to your opponent’s Confiscation or Thestalos effect to increase your chances. In fact, you can even chain it to spell or trap removal and perform nasty tricks with your own Heavy Storm. Also, it helps you reuse Dark World monsters that might have already been spent on Graceful Charity and Card Destruction. Finally, with it in hand, you can set your Browws as blockers, knowing you’ll get them back on a later turn.

2 Jar of Greed: Again, I really like this chainable trap card in our arsenal. It helps over-commit our hand to the field in the hopes of getting a Dark World monster tagged. It also works well with the two copies of Mobius we’re including.

2 Bottomless Trap Hole: Great for the Monarch matchup. With all of the monsters being dumped to your opponent’s graveyard with Card Destruction as well, remember that Bottomless Trap Hole may be the difference between your opponent using Pot of Avarice or having it as a dead draw.

One of the key omissions to this deck is Deck Devastation Virus. I don’t believe it gels very well with the intended strategy, which is to have your Dark World monsters hit by Don Zaloog, Spirit Reaper, and Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch. Also, unlike Chaos Sorcerer, using DDV on a Dark World monster looks something like your Dark World Lightning/tribute summon/Card Destruction + Dark World monster + Deck Devastation Virus for an effect. That’s three cards, so you’d better hope to hit three or more monsters with DDV to even out your investment. In this rapid-fire format, that seems less than optimal, especially since Deck Devastation Virus can lock up your own Frog or be situational in a deck that suffers from terrible draws.

Expected Matchups with the Best Decks in the Format

In addition to the general overriding Dark World theme that I’ve outlined for you, there’s a subtler mini-theme going on within this deck as well. The whole concept of the theme is deception; after all, Dark World feigns weakness and then immediately seizes the advantage with a monstrous Card Destruction for the win.

You want a slow-developing game where many cards are kept by both players. This will lend credence and flavor to your combinations that bring Dark World monsters on the field. Conducive to this is our deck’s ability to set multiple spell or trap cards in one go with monsters. Because of this, your opponent is put into a dangerous Catch-22.

First of all, if his or her Thestalos hits a Sillva or Broww, you can expect the game to end. There’s no conceivable way to pull out of that much of a disparity. Second, the opponent can either match your back field by setting multiple spells or traps, or he or she can pass with many cards in hand. In either case, Mobius or Morphing Jar will destroy one of the two strategies.

Because of Dark World’s ability to counter the current environment and my changes to add structure and draw power for its kill conditions, the deck should run quite smoothly. Hats off to Tim Perry and Theeresak Poonsombat for their contribution to this week’s New Grounds!