Assuming that you’ve been keeping up with our Phantom Darkness previews, you already know how important it is to have plenty of Dark monsters in your graveyard when you’re playing with the new cards. If you’ve somehow managed to miss our first few previews (shame on you!), I would suggest hitting the back button on your browser and reading up on Dark Armed Dragon, Dark Nephthys, and The Dark Creator . . .

Back? Good. Now, as I was saying, you’re going to want a lot of Dark monsters in your graveyard, and you have a number of choices regarding how to do so. Foolish Burial is always an option, and if you’ve already got Dark Armed Dragon in hand and two Dark monsters in your graveyard, Foolish Burial can do the job just fine. The thing is, I want my opponent to have to commit to the field first before I drop a bomb like Dark Armed Dragon, and for that, we need Dark monsters that can load the graveyard in ways other than by falling in battle. This is where Armageddon Knight comes into play. Check it out!

Armageddon Knight
Level 4 / Dark
Warrior / Effect
ATK 1400/DEF 1200
When Armageddon Knight is summoned, you can send a Dark monster from your deck to the Graveyard

Armageddon Knight is the ultimate combo piece. Searchable by both Reinforcement of the Army and Sangan (another Dark monster), Armageddon Knight is going to make your strategy go places. Fast. Take a look at the various forms of Yubel that Jason previewed on Monday.  Remember when Jason said that there was stuff in Phantom Darkness to help you dump Yubel and Doom Shaman into the graveyard? He was talking about Armageddon Knight. Cards you really don’t want to draw, like Doom Shaman, can be put right where they belong with minimal effort on the part of the Yubel player thanks to our new friend Armageddon Knight, and from there you can start your field-clearing craziness!

While Armageddon Knight is great with the cards from Phantom Darkness, it also has a number of exploitable synergies with older popular cards as well. The Destiny Heroes are all Dark monsters that can be dumped directly into the graveyard thanks to Armageddon Knight. Destiny Hero - Dasher and Destiny Hero - Disk Commander are the main recipients of this boon, setting you up for free summons and free draws sometime in the future. For those of you who have them, you could send a copy of Necroface to the graveyard to be later removed by Prometheus, King of the Shadows. You could even use it with Dark Magician of Chaos to set yourself up for the impending destruction of your weakened Light and Darkness Dragon!

While the various graveyard combos that Armageddon Knight helps you perform are quite potent, many players may still wish that it could do something similar for combos that require you to have the Dark monster you fetch in hand. Take Necroface. Sure, you can put it in the graveyard, but what about the Prometheus? The only method you have to directly search it from your deck is Sangan, and that’s a Limited card. But what if there was a way to just pick up the card you sent to the graveyard with Armageddon Knight and put it in your hand? Pretty great, right? Well, there is such a card, and you’re about to meet it!

Dark Eruption
Normal Spell
Add any Dark monster with 1500 or less ATK from your graveyard to your hand.

To quote Emeril, "BAM!" Backing up Armageddon Knight with Dark Eruption lets the former search out any monster you want so long as it’s a Dark monster with 1500 or less ATK. It’s almost like adding an extra three copies of Sangan to the deck . . . and can, ironically enough, be used to search out the real Sangan itself. Not that I ever foresee a time when searching out Sangan with the Armageddon Knight/Dark Eruption combo is necessary, but it’s good to know that you have the option if need be. Prime candidates for this search method are Prometheus, King of the Shadows (great for removing Necroface from play or setting the number of Dark monsters in your graveyard to three so you can summon Dark Armed Dragon), Necroface itself (to be used as a method of combating decks like Diamond Dude Turbo that load their removed-from-play pile for huge wins with Dimension Fusion and Return from the Different Dimension), and possibly the most powerful choice of all, Phantom of Chaos. The Phantom can be a one-man army if used properly, and if you have more copies of Armageddon Knight hanging around, you can fetch out whatever Dark monster you want to copy next with Phantom, be it Dark Armed Dragon or Demise, King of Armageddon. That kind of power is enough to bring Dark decks back to the mainstream, in addition to fueling any number of new combo decks that may develop in the future as a result of this set. Don’t think there won’t be any.

If you pull Armageddon Knight at the Sneak Preview, you should definitely be playing it in your deck if you have anything that requires Dark monsters in the graveyard. Considering the contents of the set, I’d say it’s a sure pick both at the Sneak and for the Shonen Jump Championship at the end of February. Get ready for a wild ride, as Phantom Darkness is going to shake things up like you wouldn’t believe. Keep on checking back all this week for even more previews from Phantom Darkness, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!