I often wonder exactly how much some cards change between their initial conception and the final products that we see and play with. There are some cards that scream, "I used to be way too good, so they cut me down to size" (like Security Orb). They really make you wonder how ridiculous they would have been if there weren’t people whose job it is to catch this stuff before we have a chance to warp the metagame with it. My personal favorite card of the obvious edit crew is Dark Horus. There’s simply no way that the card was originally designed to work only once per turn during a specific phase of the opponent’s turn. Just like how Security Orb probably didn’t start out life as a trap card that could only be activated in response to an attack, Dark Horus was likely missing one or more of its limitations. Perhaps it worked during either player’s main phase, or perhaps once per turn regardless of when the spell was activated. Maybe it wasn’t limited to once per turn, or could get any Dark monster back. I’ve never actually seen someone who was happy to pull the card, but imagine how much less happy everyone would be if the card had been so good that the Dark Armed Dragon decks that triggered the mid-format Forbidden list changes couldn’t even win. We’re probably talking a Cyber-Stein or Magical Scientist level of hate here. Thankfully, what we ended up getting was a powerful yet challenging card to build around.

Many people have claimed that Dark Horus in its current form is completely unplayable. These people are very wrong. You can actually do a ton of cool stuff with the card, much of which is enough to give players who aren’t as up on the rules as they should be a major headache. Here’s how it works. After a chain involving a spell resolves during one of your opponent’s main phases, you can activate the effect of Dark Horus. It doesn’t have to be the first spell played, and your opponent doesn’t necessarily have to be the one to play it. The combination of the wide array of viable quick-play spells and handy level-4 Dark monsters means that there are plenty of ways to abuse the effect of Dark Horus in a contained and non-metagame-warping manner. For example, have you ever considered using Twin-Barrel Dragon in a deck? Probably not, since it only has a 25 percent chance of success. If you had that 25 percent chance of destroying any card without the threat of being negated by Stardust Dragon during each of your opponent’s turns, however, I suspect you might find it a lot more attractive. I know I did.

Monsters: 22

3 Dark Horus
3 The Dark Creator
3 Necro Gardna
3 Armageddon Knight
2 Twin-Barrel Dragon
2 Shadowpriestess of Ohm
2 Phantom of Chaos
3 Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer
1 Snipe Hunter

While normally I tend to profess that you should always be playing Crush Card Virus in a Dark-based deck, I have at least two reasons why that’s not the case here. First off, this is a casual deck. Lots of players create special house rules for their casual games that keep some of the really ugly stuff from ruining their fun. For example, the competitors from Worlds 2007 {link: http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/yugioh/uk/events/event.aspx?eid=14} engaged in a number of "No Trap Dustshoot" matches after that particular tournament. I’m not saying you have to run this deck without Crush Card Virus, but considering that you may be the only one in the room who’s even seen that card, it might be a little much.

From a more strategic perspective, you’re running a full set of Royal Decree cards to make absolutely sure that your opponent isn’t going to pull some sort of trap-based nonsense to cut your fun short. I really dislike the idea of putting "power traps" into decks that already run three copies of Decree in the hopes that you’ll draw them first or just pitch them to Snipe Hunter if they’re useless. Instead, I’m packing the largest reasonable suite of draw effects along with enough quick-play spells to help you trigger Dark Horus on your own.

Burial from a Different Dimension only makes sense in the context of the rest of the monsters in the deck. You have a full complement of Necro Gardna cards in addition to a pair of Phantom of Chaos cards, making it entirely plausible and reasonable to get monsters that are out of play back into the graveyard. Necro Gardna is especially useful as you’ll theoretically be able to play any given Armageddon Knight multiple times to get all the Gardnas to the graveyard.

At this point, Enemy Controller and Book of Moon are rather self-explanatory, but it’s worth pointing out that in addition to being potent tricks in the heat of battle, Dark Horus allows for some particularly unpleasant trickery that would otherwise be impossible. For example, you might be stuck with a 0 ATK Phantom of Chaos on the field after using its effect to copy The Dark Creator and special summoning Dark Horus to the field. Thanks to Enemy Controller, however, you can get rid of the Phantom, steal an opposing monster for the turn, and pull back a monster to replace your Phantom! It gets even nastier if you’ve just stolen the opponent’s Destiny Hero - Malicious in response to Krebons hitting the field—especially if you flip well with Twin-Barrel Dragon!

When I initially decided that I was building a Dark Horus deck, I had a lot of questions about the actual timing of the card’s effect, most of which were settled by the ruling that says you activate Dark Horus’s effect in a new chain after the resolution of a chain in which a spell was activated. The activation of the spell can’t be negated in any way, but if you have a chain with multiple spells in it, only one of them needs to go through.

For example, let’s say my opponent activates Mystical Space Typhoon, targeting my Offerings to the Doomed. I chain my spell to target the opponent’s Stardust Dragon or Thought Ruler Archfiend. The opponent can negate it if he or she wants to, but since the activation of the Mystical Space Typhoon wasn’t negated, I can still take the effect of Dark Horus. Even better, the timing of Dark Horus places it at a point where ignition effects can’t be used . . . meaning that should your opponent discard Destiny Hero - Malicious for Destiny Draw, you’ll be able to trigger Dark Horus and bring back to stop your opponent from making anything of it. Kycoo is especially important considering that I’m not using D.D. Crow here. Frankly, space was at a premium in this build, and excluding a card that has a reasonable, synergistic replacement seemed like the best way to cut down to something reasonable. In addition to being the ultimate answer, 42 also seems to be a very manageable number of cards for Dark-based decks with plenty of draw cards which don’t want to see multiples of certain cards appear too often. Take a look at the Teleport Dark Armed Dragon decks as an example of this phenomenon.

Your basic strategy here will be to summon Dark Horus as quickly as you can with viable targets for its effect either already in the graveyard or easily capable of getting there. Armageddon Knight sets up the main combos that fuel your deck very nicely, allowing you to increase your Dark count for The Dark Creator, fetch specific monsters for use with Dark Horus or Phantom of Chaos, find Necro Gardna . . . the list goes on. Then, once its purpose is served, you can ship it off to the graveyard via Shadowpriestess of Ohm for a quick 800 damage and the potential to send yet another monster to the graveyard should you choose to revive it. Shadowpriestess of Ohm is instrumental in the deck, allowing for more devastating attacks while also keeping liabilities off your field. Stuff like Phantom of Chaos tends to just die horribly against any Gladiator Beast after you’ve used it once, so having an outlet to turn such a monster into extra damage becomes a requirement. Also, for those of you who like to get more than one use out of the Phantom, might I suggest tributing it to steal the only potential attacker on the opposing side of the field and then reviving it with Dark Horus?

Twin-Barrel Dragon seems to exist for the sole purpose of being abused in conjunction with Dark Horus. You can summon it once and take a shot at any opposing card. If it works out, go ahead and enjoy your free damage. If not? Well, if it ends up in the graveyard, it’s going to come back and take another free shot at an opposing card. In fact, those two copies of Twin-Barrel Dragon are likely to keep you flipping coins during each of your opponent’s turns if you combine them with Shadowpriestess of Ohm. Heck, it’s like free damage and free destruction all at once, which is just fantastic unless you get wrecked by an arbitrary uber-Test Tiger combo. Fortunately, that’s not the kind of thing that happens very often in the casual scene, so go ahead and enjoy yourself! Playing with huge monsters with seemingly-impractical-but-actually-awesome effects is one of my absolute favorite things about this game, and Dark Horus is a perfect example of the type of card that I really have fun with. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly have fun!

—Jerome McHale