So if Dark Master Zorc played such a major role in the original manga and has such a strong connection to one of the story’s major characters, why is the card based on him now an easily forgettable common? I think the major reason for this is because the story behind the card has been largely forgotten. Let’s face it; it has been a pretty long time since the original saga ended, and the anime series that ran on T.V. here in the U.S. never gave us the whole story. The Duelist anime did give us an altered version of the Monster World arc in the form of a two-part Duelist Kingdom episode where Yami Bakura trapped the souls of Yugi and the others in their favorite cards. Those episodes never did much for me when I first saw them. When I finally read the manga version a few years later, I found that original version of that two-part episode was infinitely superior.
Another nail in the coffin of Dark Master Zorc’s legacy is that his card probably isn’t used very much by players these days. For one thing, Zorc’s a Ritual Monster. I don’t know who made the decision to release Zorc as a Ritual Monster, though being a Ritual Monster suits Zorc pretty well since a kind of dark ritual was needed for summoning Zorc Necrophades in the original saga (plus the general concept behind Ritual Monsters is kind of evil if you think about it). But the thing about Ritual Monsters is that they’ve been in a decline for many years. They do seem to be bouncing back a little in the current Arc-V era, but most players I assume prefer to use Fusion, Synchro or Xyz Monsters, which don’t take up space in the Main Deck like Ritual Monsters and can probably be summoned with much greater ease.
The other problem that the Dark Master – Zorc card suffers from seems to be a common misconception that using his dice roll effect is too big of a risk. While it is true that rolling a six sing Zorc’s effect would be to say the least a major setback, the risk of that happening is in fact fairly low. There’s only a one-in-six chance of rolling the die and getting Zorc’s negative effect, while at the same time there’s a two-in-six chance of destroying all of the opponent’s monsters and a three-in-six chance of taking out at least one enemy monster. To test how truly risky using Zorc’s effect is, I got out a six-sided die and rolled it several times to see how often a six would come up. There were of course a few times when I would roll a six, but it didn’t happen incredibly often. There are also some really good safeguards that can be used with Zorc in the event of rolling the dreaded six, such as the Continuous Spell known as Ritual Cage that protects Ritual Monsters like Zorc from being destroyed by card effects. Another thing to do is just use a little common sense about when to use Zorc’s effect.
I think that pretty much covers it for this post. The Monster World arc of the original manga is my favorite from those first seven volumes, and it’s great that the legacy of that arc lives on as the Dark Master – Zorc card. After I had read that arc for the first time I desperately wanted to get my hands on that card for my collection, but for some reason I could never seem to find it. Then a couple of years ago I just ordered the common version of Zorc’s card and his Ritual Spell online. It’s unfortunate though that the story behind this legendary Dark Master may have been forgotten by the younger generations of fans out there. But then who knows? Some of those younger fans may one day pick up a rerelease of the first seven volumes of the manga and discover the amazing story behind a card that they may have thought was nothing more than junk.
