“It’s the… Eye of Timaues, it’s the thrill of the fight!”
“Rising up to the challenge of our rivals!”
“And the last known survivor stalks his prey…”
Okay, sorry for the Survivor-related song parody. Though it is kind of apt, considering that there are a few slight similarities between the Waking the Dragons/Doma arc of the original Yu-Gi-Oh and Rocky III. In the Doma arc, Yami Yugi lost the Egyptian God cards, the symbol of his championship title. He lost his title of King of Games when he lost to Raphael, and in the same duel he lost Yugi. In Rocky III, the film’s protagonist lost his championship title when he was defeated by the character of Clubber Lang, and during the same fight his manager and close friend Mickey died of a heat attack. And in both stories, Yugi and Rocky had to overcome their grief and insecurities and fight to get back what they lost.
I’ll admit that it’s kind of a thin comparison, but I felt it was still apt. Anyway, in this post I’m obviously going to be covering a few of the big name cards being released in the upcoming Dragons of Legend booster set.
Dark Magician Girl the Dragon Knight
While Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl are two of the most iconic monsters in the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, support for these cards has greatly dwindled over the years. But thanks to the cards listed above, Dark Magician decks have finally gained some brand new tricks. The Eye of Timaeus and the two Fusion Monsters it can help to summon allow Dark Magician decks to become a more Fusion oriented deck. And with the right cards, they can even turn a Dark Magician deck into an anti-dragon deck.
The key card in this new type of deck is obviously The Eye of Timaeus. This card allows one to summon a Fusion Monster that uses Dark Magician or Dark Magician Girl as Fusion Material using just one monster. While The Eye is intended for the summoning of Dark Magician Girl the Dragon Knight and Amulet Dragon, it can also make it a lot easier to summon Dark Paladin or Darkflare Knight (though why anyone would want to use Darkflare Knight and Mirage Knight in this day and age is beyond me). The downside to The Eye of Timaeus is that it isn’t as easily searched from the deck as Polymerization. Yet it still makes Fusion Summoning with a Dark Magician-related monster a lot easier.
While the ideal way to summon both Dark Magician Girl the Dragon Knight and Amulet Dragon is with The Eye of Timaeus, they can also be summoned by fusing Dark Magician Girl or Dark Magician with any old Dragon-type monster. So one way to make summoning these two Fusions easier would be to include a few dragons in the deck. The downside to using dragons is that the deck in question would become a little incompatible with Spellcaster-specific support cards, but at the same time it would also provide Dark Paladin with some extra attack power. Another good idea would be to at least Side Deck Super Polymerization, allowing one to use the opponent’s dragons to summon Amulet Dragon or DMG the Dragon Knight.
In order to use The Eye of Timaeus, Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl need to be on the field. While there are more than a few cards out there that can help to Special Summon these two legendary cards, a better shortcut would be to use Elemental HERO Prisma to act as a substitute. This can also make summoning Dark Paladin easier by substituting for Buster Blader and Fusion Summoning the normal way. Another good shortcut is to use the Spell, Dragon’s Mirror to banish Dark Magician/Dark Magician Girl and a dragon to summon Amulet Dragon/DMG the Dragon Knight. One possible move would be to use Prisma’s effect to send Dark Magician to the Graveyard and then summon Dark Paladin, then use Dragon’s Mirror to summon Amulet Dragon.
DMG the Dragon Knight is truly one of the ace cards for this type of deck. Her destruction effect can make it easy to get rid of troubling monsters that could quickly become a problem in a duel, such as Number 101: Silent Honors ARK. If other dragons are used in the deck, DMG the Dragon Knight’s effect can also load up the Graveyard to power up Dark Paladin or set up a Fusion using Dragon’s Mirror. Amulet Dragon is probably used later in the duel after both Graveyards have been loaded up with a lot of Spell cards. The nice thing about Amulet Dragon’s effect though is that it works on the opponent’s Graveyard, so it can keep the opponent from reusing some potentially damaging Spell cards.
Legendary Knight Timaeus: This was the card I was looking forward to the most in Dragons of Legend. And when its effect was fully revealed I was kind of disappointed. When summoned, Timaeus can banish one of the opponent’s Spell cards. This can get rid of troubling Field and Continuous Spells that can ruin one’s day. Timaeus’ secondary effect isn’t much to write home about though. When he’s attacked, he can recycle a Spell card from the Graveyard. Other than that, Timaeus is pretty much just a 2800 ATK beatstick. And while Legendary Knight Timaeus’ effect to get rid of Spells is useful, he doesn’t really seem worth the high activation cost for Legend of Heart. So in my opinion, using Legendary Knight Timaeus is highly optional.
That about wraps it up for this post. One of the sad things about this game is that as some passes and more and more new booster sets come out, certain types of decks become obsolete. Somewhere along the line Dark Magician decks fell into that category. Not something one would expect for the cards used by the very first protagonist in the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise. But hopefully with these old cards from the Doma arc now made new, the down and out Dark Magician deck can regain its former glory just as Yami Yugi did during that very same arc of the anime.
And now to close the post and make the song parody at the beginning make sense, here's Eye of the Tiger by Survivor.
