Nightmare Magician – #DUNE-EN025
If this card battles a monster, neither can be destroyed by that battle. At the end of the Damage Step, if this card battled an opponent’s monster: You can take control of that opponent’s monster. Once per turn, at the start of the Damage Step, if another monster attacks: You can destroy 1 card on the field.
Date Reviewed: August 30th, 2023
Rating: 2.92
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Nightmare Magician is the only Illusion Monster we are looking at this week, though that’s a funny way of calling it a Spellcaster.
One of the new “Illusion” Type monsters, Nightmare Magician fits in with many Level 7 Spellcasters we’ve seen with its stats. Battle-style effect that can give you control over your opponent’s monster after you battle it with Nightmare Magician. You still take the damage if you hit something bigger that Nightmare Magician, but neither are destroyed by battle. Useful effect to steal big boss monsters while still being able to clear out smaller monsters. Stealing their monster gives you material to do Extra
Deck stuff with as well as grant another attacker during that turn. On top of that, Nightmare Magician can pop a card if another monster attacks.
If your opponent were stupid enough to battle with Nightmare Magician, then they deserve to lose their monster. This effect isn’t a once per turn effect either. Diffusion Wave Motion alongside this card could have been ridiculous, however it is an Illusion-Type so no dice. The simple attack on your turn, steal, then attack with their monster and pop a card on their field is lethal. You steal a monster, get rid of another card, and either get rid of another monster or hit for LP damage all off one card, and at most it’ll cost you is LP and not many players care about losing LP. On the flip side, if you lose two cards and LP then you will start caring.
Nightmare Magician is a decent monster without much good support behind it. Special Summon it somehow outside the Illusion archetype and let it rip with its effects, but other than that I’d play it in its own archetype because, while it doesn’t have great support, it still can be searched and Special Summoned in some form. Stealing monsters and not being destroyed by battle when battling a monster are good effects and even one turn with it can swing momentum.
Advanced-3/5 Art-3.5/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Midweek gives us a monster of a new typing as I assume this card will be the face of said type, Nightmare Magician.
Nightmare Magician is a Level 7 DARK Illusion with 2500 ATK and 2000 DEF. Stats are pretty solid, DARK is always great, and Illusion monsters are doing well right now with the Chimera stuff and I assume we’ll get a ton more support for it later on. Anyways, if it battles a monster, neither monster can be destroyed in that battle. This seems like it’s gonna be thrown onto every Illusion monster printed later on, which is honestly fine if the monster effects are good enough. They might not be able to destroy things in battle, but at least they can’t be destroyed in battle either. At the end of the Damage Step where this card battled an opponent’s monster, you get to take control of said monster. Pretty good considering this isn’t destroying those monsters in battle, so instead you get to take them for plays of your own. The second effect is a soft once per turn at the start of the Damage Step where another monster battles, letting you destroy a card on the field, which is also a fine effect. Can stop that battle by destroying the monster attacking or take down 2 of the opponent’s cards at once with this effect and the battle. It’s a fine card on paper. Main issues are this not having a Special Summon effect and right now relying on the generic Illusion stuff. You could run this with the other Illusion cards, but most opt not to since it doesn’t feel needed. Hopefully something like this later gets a whole archetype dedicated to it, similar to Dark Magician. The effects are fine and the future potential of Illusions keep the score somewhat higher than normal despite Level 7s like this usually no longer having a place in the game.
Advanced Rating: 2.5/5
Art: 4.5/5 If you’re going to make the face of a brand new typing, this card isn’t that bad for the role.
Mighty
Vee
Today’s card is our first-ever review of a monster from the brand-new Illusion type debuting in Duelist Nexus, based on previously manga-exclusive type of the same name used for some monsters during the DM era. Nightmare Magician, while not the premiere Illusion monster, is the first we’re covering, a level 7 DARK Illusion monster. Compared to Wyrms or Psychics, Illusion has gotten support right off the bat, as you can search it with Gazelle the King of Mythical Claws. Funnily enough, it has ace monster stats as well, with 2500 attack and 2000 defense, which are solid numbers but not very high for a level 7 monster.
Immediately, Nightmare Magician has a red flag in that it cannot Special Summon itself, so you’ll have to either Tribute Summon it or rely on external summoning effects to field it. Nightmare Magician shares the same continuous effect as all other current Illusion monsters, preventing it from destroying monsters or being destroyed by battle, setting up cheeky OTK setups that we won’t get into until we get to our first Illusion archetype proper. After battling, Nightmare Magician will let you permanently take control of the monster that it battled, which makes it pretty obvious why you wouldn’t want to destroy it (and makes your opponent look crazy if they try to attack it). Additionally, Nightmare Magician has a soft once per turn effect to destroy any card on the field if another monster attacks. This effect is clearly meant to help Nightmare Magician remove obstacles when there’s a monster you really don’t want to keep alive, or you already have a different monster in mind to take control of. Despite being full of battle effects, Nightmare Magician is actually fairly competent at what it does and can easily enable OTKs with its control effect, and it can cheese decks that struggle to out monsters outside of combat. The main issue is having no innate way to Special Summon itself and Chimera, the current only Illusion archetype, is already incredibly adept at OTK, so Nightmare Magician is largely bricky and redundant. You could run one copy in case you need it, though it’ll be a little tricky to summon without putting in effort.
Advanced: 3.25/5
Art: 3.5/5 He liked the Millennium Eye so much he decided to model his entire outfit on it.
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