Instructions on how to build and play Pendulum Magician

By Tyler10nyson Published Apr 14, 2022 Updated May 21, 2022

This will be a guide to help you better understand in detail what you need to do to build and play Pendulum Magician!!!

Sections covered in this guide:

overview

Pendulum Magicians are a pendulum archetype based on 2 separate support waves of magicians (not including Dark Magicians). The first wave was the original structure deck with cards still played in modern lists such as Wisdom-Eye Magician and Oafdragon Magician . Wave 2 of magician support in tcg is a version of a mini set called Pendulum Evolution which contains all the new pendulum magicians you might recognize like Harmonizing Magician and Double Iris Magician . After this second wave, the deck was much better than before, but since it was released in the middle of the Zoodiac tier 0 format, it didn't make much of a splash in the meta. A few months after Links was released in the tcg, pendulum magicians will receive the support they need to become a tier 1 deck through Heavymetalfoes Electrumite . For a long time the deck was at the top until constant hits on each subsequent list board finally knocked the deck out of the rankings in tcg. Nowadays, we have both Electrumite and Astrograph at 1 in Master Duel, cards that were previously banned in tcg, and because of this this deck is very playable now. This deck can be played in a variety of ways, and I'll cover the different variations you can play in this guide, but for the purposes of this guide, I'll focus on what I considered good around balanced lists rather than going too deep into things like ftk builds and other things.

Core

Beast

Wisdom-Eye Magician (3x)

Your main card for consistency, its main effect in the pendulum zone allows you to destroy it and put another scale magician in its place from the deck as long as you have another magician or performapal in the zone other pendulum. We'll want to play 3 so we can see it consistently to get the exact scales we need while filling the extra deck with a body we can summon.

Oafdragon Magician (2-3x)

This card is by far your lowest scale. When there is a magician in another pendulum, you can use Oafdragon to add a magician or odd-eyes from your Extra Deck face-up to your hand. This is important if you need to regain a body to help overcome the limit of monsters you can summon, get a card to continue your next turn, or if you have to do something like Normal summon a Harmonizing Magician to create electrumite and now you want to add it back to your hand so you can use its effect with your pendulum summoning. As a monster, when it is normal or special summoned, it can target a magician or odd-eyed monster in your graveyard and add it to your hand. This effect doesn't come up very often because your cards only end up in the grave when detached from xyz, removed by Pendulum Call , or their summons are negated by something like Solemn Strike . This card also has an awkward level of 6, meaning it cannot be summoned normally without a sacrifice or used very easily to create rank 4 or synchro level 8, however with Links are available then it's not a problem and so we can comfortably play multiple copies of these without worrying about it clogging up our deck.

Double Iris Magician (1x)

We only use copies because the game only allows us to use one copy. When this card is destroyed, it searches for a Pendulumgraph from the deck. Star and Time Pendulumgraph are some of the more powerful cards we'll be playing, and this card allows us to see them consistently. It also has a scale effect that allows you to target a Dark spellcaster monster you control to then cause that monster to deal double damage to a monster this turn and then destroy destroy iris in scale after this effect is applied. The new wave of magician cards often have pendulum effects that you can activate in scale, which will then destroy themselves, and they will have monster effects that activate when destroyed. We mainly want to focus on monster effects, and it's important to note that none of them are difficult once per turn. So if you have the ability to kill any new magician twice in one turn, it will trigger their effects twice.

Black Fang Magician (1-2x)

As one of our main high scales, this card will be quite effective. It has a pendulum effect that allows you to halve the attack power of a monster your opponent controls and then destroy it yourself. Monster effect allows you to special summon a dark spellcaster monster from your graveyard when this card is destroyed. Both of those effects can be very useful and will appear, but mostly this card is played as another high scale option. You usually play one of these but with astrograph and electron electrumite coming back I can see playing 2 copies being very viable because if you destroy one with electrumite to add back astro you might want the second copy in the deck so the atro can be easily searched.

Purple Poison Magician (1-2x)

Purple Poison has a fairly low scale, but you usually don't want it because oafdragon often serves a better role with its pendulum effect allowing you to recycle cards from your extra deck. As a pendulum effect, Purple Poison will increase your monster's attack power by 1200 and then destroy itself before damage calculation. When this card is destroyed, you can target a face-up card on the field and destroy it. This is a more useful effect and when activated at the damage step, it is more difficult for your opponent to avoid the destructive effect. Usually you will summon this card and sometimes keep it on the field as a target for Time Pendulumgraph to destroy so you can turn on 2 cards with the effects of time and purple poison. Like black fang, I find playing 2 copies to help facilitate taking advantage of astro.

Astrograph Sorcerer (1x)

As you've seen this card mentioned before, this card is key in electrumite plays and allows us to gain card advantage quite easily. Its main monster effect allows it to special summon itself from the hand when a card we control is destroyed, then on the same chain, you can choose 1 monster from the grave, extra deck or be destroyed. banish and be destroyed this turn, and add 1 monster with the same name from your deck to your hand. This combo is great with electrumite because the main combo is to send astrograph to the extra deck with electrumite's effect, then you destroy a card in your pendulum zone to add astrograph, and then when electrumite's effect resolves it activates. activate to draw a card, you can activate the card you destroyed if it has a float effect, and finally astrograph will activate from your hand to summon itself and often search for the card you destroyed. Another monster effect allows you to summon Z-ARC but it is not feasible or suitable in competitive matches. This card's scale effect allows you to self-destruct and activate in the pendulum zone or special summon a Stargazer Magician from your deck. You usually do this so you can create an electrumite with Stargazer Magician and another Normal summoned pendulum card and get arrow links that will then allow you to summon more monsters from the extra deck when you finally do. now summons pendulum.

Stargazer Magician (0-1x)

As a gem to summon from astro, some people choose not to play this card, but I will still play it. Using it makes the pendulum effect quite vivid and clear, it doesn't create a terribly low scale.

Chronograph Sorcerer (1x)

This card works very similarly to astro. It has a scale effect that allows you to summon Timegazer Magician or place it in the pendulum zone, which you will mainly use to perform pendulum summons with electrumite. Monster effects work similarly where if a card you control is destroyed, Chronograph will activate in hand to special summon itself but instead of searching for a card like astro, it will be able to special summon a additional cards from your hand. This is a very useful and relevant effect because if you start with something like magician, wisdom-eye, chronograph and another pendulum monster; you can use wisdom-eyes to destroy yourself to complete your scale, which will then activate chronograph in your hand to summon itself and another card to create your electrumite without using Normal summon your.

Timegazer Magician (0-1x)

Like targazer, we play this card primarily as a body used to summon electrumite. I would play 1 copy of the card but again I can see some builds that are suitable for not taking it.

Harmonizing Magician (2x)

This is one of your best cards in the entire deck, it is a level 4 tuner with a powerful effect. This card has a few important limitations that you need to be aware of, mainly that it cannot be summoned from the extra deck and you cannot use it as fusion, synchro or xyz material unless the other materials are pendulum magician monster. This is mainly relevant when you want to use it to synchro out level 8 or xyz out rank 4, but this does not apply to Links so you can summon Link using Harmonizing Magician and any monster. any other animal as raw material. When this card is pendulum summoned from the hand, you can activate its effect to special summon another magician monster from the deck in defense position. That monster's effects will be negated and will be banished when it leaves the field. This allows you to create link 2, synchro or xyz from just this one card and is important for some of our combos. We play 2 copies because we are simply allowed to play 2 copies. As for the pendulum effect, this card simply increases the monster's attack and defense by 100 for each face-up magician monster in the extra deck. This effect can be very relevant, but you usually wouldn't use this as a scale unless you start with 2 copies.

Performapal Celestial Magician (0-1x)

This card is quite interesting because it is both a performapal searched from Performapal Pendulum Sorcerer , and a Magician so it can gain benefits from being one of the large scales and can be summoned and used as Raw material with harmonizing magician. You can activate this card's monster effect at any time during the turn it is normal or special summoned, and it gains different effects based on the type of card you control. First of all, if you bring this card out, you will gain the effect of controlling a pendulum monster, allowing you to search for any pendulum monster during the end phase. But there are other related effects if you control an xyz, fusion, or synchro monster such as being able to double this card's ATK, attack directly, and prevent your opponent from activating monster effects this turn. As a pendulum effect, this card can activate if one of your face-up fusion, synchro, or xyz monsters is destroyed. This card will then activate allowing you to special summon the destroyed monster and then destroy this monster. We usually play a copy here so we have another target for pendulum sorcerer while this card still has a pretty good effect.

Tuning Magician (1-3x)

As the only non pendulum magician monster we use, this card can end up being quite useful. The fact that it's not a pendulum means it doesn't combo well with some special effects that require a magician pendulum monster, but this card is still very strong. It is a level 1 tuner that when Normal or Special summoned, your opponent gains 400 LP and you then take 400 LP damage. If you have 2 magicians in your pendulum zone, you can special summon this card from your hand or grave but then banish it when it leaves the field. This effect makes this card very useful because you can easily get materials to Link Summon by Linking this card and then using the effect in the graveyard. It being a level 1 tuner is also important because you can make any of your level 8 synchro using tuning magician and astrograph as materials. You will want to use 1-3 copies depending on your preference. This card is usually summoned from Crystron Halqifibrax , so you don't need many copies, but some people like to play more to be able to see it on their first turn so you can banish a copy from the Pot of Desires and still have another copy in the deck to use.

Performapal Skullcrobat Joker (3x)

Although this card is not a magician in name, when it is Normal Summoned, it searches for any magician, performapal, or odd-eyes card from your deck to your hand. This gives us very good consistency with a card that almost searches the entire deck. This card's pendulum effect is just a restriction that doesn't allow you to summon pendulums or any cards other than monsters magician, performapal, and odd-eyes. This card is almost never used as a scale pendulum as it can usually be Normal Summoned to search for the high scale you want.

Performapal Pendulum Sorcerer (2-3x)

This card is another main performapal we use. When summoning a pendulum, you can target up to 2 cards you control and then destroy them, allowing you to search your deck for a performapal monster for each card you destroy. This is very useful because you can destroy cards like Double Iris Magician to search for a Skullcrobat Joker to continue and activate Double Iris. This card is a low scale that can be used once. Its effect increases the ATK of all performapal monsters by 1000 for the turn that a performapla monster is pendulum summoned. You can play 2-3 copies depending on preference and commonly available deck space.

Spell and Trap

Duelist Alliance (2-3x)

This deck is mostly monster cards since it is a pendulum deck, but there are some spells that help facilitate our turns and Duelist Alliance is one of them. When a card is in the pendulum zone, this card allows you to search for a pendulum monster or spell/trap that has the word pendulum in its name. Specifically, the cards we can search for in this deck are Performapal Pendulum Sorcerer , Double Iris Magician , Pendulum Call , Star Pendulumgraph and Time Pendulumgraph . The reason this card can be searched for Double Iris is because Double Iris has an effect that always treats it as a “Pendulum Dragon” card meaning it can be searched by Duelist Alliance . We usually play 2-3 copies because we want to start with this card because the things it searches are quite good.

Pendulum Call (1-3x)

This card is a very powerful card that allows you to discard a card and then search for 2 magician pendulums with different names. Additionally, your magician pendulum cards in the pendulum area cannot be destroyed until the end of your opponent's next turn. There is a restriction that does not allow you to activate this card if you have activated a magician monster's pendulum effect this turn. This is important to note because you cannot use wisdom eye before activating Pendulum Call . Please also note that using wisdom eye after activating Pendulum Call will have no effect because Pendulum Call does not allow destroying your magician and wisdom eye will not be able to use effects. These limitations can be a bit annoying, but they also protect you, and this brings great consistency to your deck. Use at least one copy but how many depends on your satisfaction as this card is also searchable from Duelist Alliance .

Star Pendulumgraph (1x)

This card is great for consistency because using it allows you to search a magician monster once per turn whenever a magician leaves the field. You can easily activate this card before summoning pendulum by using wisdom-eyes' effect, but don't forget it will also activate from Linking your monsters or using them as synchro materials and fusion. It also has the additional effect of preventing your spellcasters from being targeted by spells, although this is not always present. We'll be playing one copy because it's searchable from both duelist alliance and double iris and starting more than one copy doesn't hurt us much.

Time Pendulumgraph (1-2x)

This card is one of our main searchable interruptions. It has a similar effect to Star Pendulumgraph in that our spellcasters cannot be targeted by traps. Its main effect is to allow us to target a magician we control and another card on our opponent's field and then destroy both. This is quite effective because we can activate the magician's float effect, while also confusing the opponent. There is another important effect about this card that you should know. If this card does not destroy 2 cards from this effect, you can send 1 additional card from the field to the field. This second effect is extremely powerful because it is non-destructive. The main ways we will trigger this will be by targeting an indestructible scale from Pendulum Call or if you target your opponent's hand and they trigger an effect that tries to dodge Time Pendulumgraph . On the resolve step, your opponent's card will not be destroyed there, but you can send a card they control to the grave, possibly even a new card they may have replaced to try and dodge your effect.

Extra Deck

Heavymetalfoes Electrumite (1x)

The best pendulum support from a Link monster, Electrumite has seen some rough times in the TCG with it being banned. It's now back in Master Duel and allows us to do some very nice plays with it. When this card is Summoned, it can send any pendulum monster from your deck to your extra deck face-up, although we will mostly send Astrograph Sorcerer . Another effect allows you to target a face-up card you control, then destroy it and add a face-up pendulum monster from your extra deck to your hand. Finally, this card has an effect that forces you to draw a card if a card in your pendulum leaves the field. As detailed earlier, this synergizes very well with astrograph, which will search again for anything we've destroyed while summoning itself and giving us another draw.

Selene Queen of the Master Magicians (2x)

This is the only other remaining Link that I can say is the core of the magician pendulums. It has great Link markers for pendulums and is easy to summon with a nice effect that allows you to extend your turn. We will be playing 2 copies as she can be easily created from electrumite and on turn 3 onwards she will appear a lot for recovery plays. The fact that she is an easy to summon 3 link that can summon a link from the grave is also quite beneficial for OTK accesscode players.

Tech + Engine

Mythical Beast Master Cerberus and Mythical Beast Jackal King (Mythical Beast Engine)

This engine is considered another way to bring a pendulum body onto the field without needing to summon Normal or pendulum. The idea is to use the scale effect of Mythical Beast Master Cerberus to search for Mythical Beast Jackal King so that he can then use his scale effect to special summon Cerberus. If played later, this card is quite strong because if you activate two spells after Master Cerberus is on the field, it can banish a card by removing the spell counter. This engine also makes it possible for you to summon the jackal king pendulum back to you for a negate after a spell has been activated. The main downside to this card is that Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring can negate your Cerberus without destroying it, leaving scale 4 to effectively end your turn with no way to remove it.

Abyss Actor - Curtain Raiser (0-1x)

This is another card, often played to help us create electrumite. Its scale effect allows it to be special summoned once per battle if you control no monsters. This avoids blocking your scale from Ash while also having a very useful scale 7 if you need it. Not a bad choice if you want to focus your consistency more on making electrumite one.

Endymion the Mighty Master of Magic (1-2x)

This card can be searched from electrumite. After creating Selene with 6 counters, you can use Endymion as a scale to remove those counters and non-target destruction to all cards you control that have spell counters on them. The problem is that it usually only has Endymion and Selene, so while a non-target kill using 2 copies is fine, it's more likely to brick you since it's not a magician and That turn happens very rarely because you usually want to search astrograph.

Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon and Odd-Eyes Vortex Dragon (Set Vortex Dragon)

Another negate that we can set up quite easily is vortex dragon. This can be done by summoning Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon using any 2 level 7 monsters, then overlaying Absolute and from there becoming Odd-Eyes Vortex Dragon when it is sent to the grave. Astrograph is usually one of the level 7 monsters you have, and you can put a dragonpit magician in your deck to summon harmonizing magician like other monsters.

Supreme King Dragon Darkwurm, Supreme King Gate Zero and Supreme King Gate Infinity (Darkwurm Engine)

Darkwurm is a monster that can special itself from the grave and when summoned will search for one of these supreme king gates, this helps create electrumite without summoning a pendulum, and it also has a decent scaling effect Good allows it to expand another gate from the deck giving you a scale to summon the pendulum with. The basic ways to get Darkwurm from the deck to the grave is through cards like Foolish Burial , Dragon Shrine , or even discarding it for Pendulum Call . Typically, these cards have been used in ftk pendulum decks. Darkwurm will usually search one of the gates while electrumite will search the other gate. When both gates are in the pendulum area, they can activate an effect that destroys them to search for Instant Fusion . For ftk, you will use Instant Fusion to summon Lyrilusc - Independent Nightingale , link it together to get it in the grave and then use your 4 dark pendulum monsters to summon 2 copies of Supreme King Dragon Starving Venom . They will then copy the effect of the lyrilusc in the grave and can burn your opponents for 4,000 damage each. In tcg, this is a very effective and consistent ftk. I'm sure there's a good way to build a semi-consistent version of this ftk in MD, but I won't mention it any further than mentioning it here.

Artifact Dagda and Artifact Scythe (Artifact Engine)

This is an engine that pendulums can use very effectively, setting scythe with magician tg wonder will enable pendulums to only summon a harmonizing magician.

Other Techs

As a combo deck based on 3-4 card combos, you don't have much space to use common techs. Usually a few Pot of Desires will do to help improve consistency. In Master Duel, Maxx "C" is the best and also quite legal and since it is almost mandatory to use 3 Maxx "C" , 3 Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring and 2 Called by the Grave just to counter cards and use Use it for yourself. As a combo deck, you could consider using Crossout Designator as well as another option to deal with Maxx C, but I personally think the deck space is a bit tight to fit multiple answers to it .

Extra Deck

Other options

I just want to quickly go over the Extra Deck options here, but you'll be able to see what my Extra Deck looks like in the Sample Deck at the end. First of all, you'll want to focus on your link plays because those are your strongest plays and they give you arrows so you can summon multiple monsters from the Extra Deck. So cards like Heavymetalfoes Electrumite that I listed and Crystron Halqifibrax are good cards that can start some of your link play. Other options are of course Artifact Dagda which we briefly mentioned, Artemis, Magistus Moon Maiden so you can turn tuning magician into 2 materials for links and of course good general staples like Apollousa, Bow of the Goddess and Accesscode Talker . Since this is level 4 and they are tuners, you also have the synchro toolbox and xyz available to you. The main xyz monsters you might consider are the likes of Tornado Dragon , Divine Arsenal AA-ZEUS - Sky Thunder , Abyss Dweller, and maybe even a Timestar Magician to search for next turn and ensure pop 2 from time pendulumgraph, otherwise Supreme King Dragon Dark Rebellion is another good choice that facilitates OTK very easily. Finally for synchro monsters, we have options like Borreload Savage Dragon , Ignister Prominence , Blasting Dracoslayer and potentially even Supreme King Dragon Clear Wing , all of which are viable options we have can use.

Combo

Heavymetalfoes Electrumite (Electrumite Combo)

What you need: 2 scales and 2 monster pendulums

Activate the scales and pendulum summon both monsters. Here you want to try and set double iris magician to scale. Link into Heavymetalfoes Electrumite and send astrograph if you have oafdragon, depending on what you sent to the Extra Deck to summon link, consider adding to hand before using electrumite. If not, use electrumite to turn on 1 scale (this also depends on the hand and how you want to play) and add astrograph to your hand. On a new chain electrumite will activate to add a card, if you pop 1 double iris you will want to activate its destruction effect here, and finally activate astrograph to special summon and add a card when maybe. Since we pendulum summoned 2 monsters to create electrumite, you can then normally summon another one to get enough materials for apollousa. You can also get a time pendulumgraph if you draw a duelist alliance or you destroy the double iris with an electrumites effect. Ending deck: apollousa with 3 negatives, 1 card on the scale, 1 card you drew in your hand, there may be more cards you can search or add if you have double iris or oafdragon with the second card 5 that you started with.