Dark Hole Is Bad in High Level Play

OH NO YOU DIDN-

Shut the fuck up.  Yes I did.  I went there and honestly it's getting fucking annoying how every instance that a decklist comes up and Dark Hole is absent people flip the hell out.  Youtube accounts flame, dislike or outright unsubscribe to anyone who profiles a known deck but forgoes the use of Dark Hole.  The reason for this?  "Dark Hole is a staple.  You have to run it.  You're bad for not running it" or "You need Dark Hole to beat X deck.  What are you gonna do when your opponent shits on you?" 

Okay.  I understand why people would think this.  Dark Hole is a powerful card.  It's been limited since 2010 after coming off the banlist.  It's been a staple for many years.  However that time is slowly coming to an end much like how Book of Moon went from being Staple to tech over the course of a few formats.  Now Book of Moon is starting to come back into play and that would be due to the same reasons Dark Hole is weakening.

Dark Hole does jack shit to the top decks of the format.

New Text: I'm basically a Threatening Roar, but not Chainable.

I'll try to spare you much of the things raised by Kris Perovic's own article on this (which you can find here) but needless to say its been something that I've thought of for a very long time.  At first it was as simple as not running it in decks that always have a monster on the board like Dragunity as you'd never want to nuke your Stardust, REDMD and Atum setup.  Samurai and Dino Rabbit could also fall into this.  However as the formats went on and more decks became difficult to kill through destruction/spell and trap removal I found myself wondering why do I even run this card that isn't guaranteed to work half the time when I could run something that's always helpful like Book of Moon?  The fact is that best decks these days either are highly resistant to Dark Hole or are flat out unaffected by it.  Right now the top decks are Dragon Rulers, Prophecy and Evilswarm.  All 3 Decks don't even bat an eye to Dark Hole;


-Dragon Rulers; Dracossack stays on board.  Better have a follow up play or they'll make another Dracossack.  Good job!  You've done NOTHING.  Oh and they can just summon 4 or more dragons to completely replace that field.
-Prophecy; Spellbook of Wisdom.  That Priestess is still there.
-Evilswarm; 3 Pandemics, 3 Dress and 1-3 Lance.  Good luck with that.

Then there's the lower tier decks;

-Fire Fist and Mermail we already know about.
-Monarchs; You're at best wiping one monster off the field.  Two at the most.
-Constellar; Omega is a Pandemic on legs and it runs Safe Zone
-Dragunity; You're kidding, right?
-Karakuri; This is assuming you're allowed to live.
-Lavals; "Negate with Quasar"

And the even lower tier decks;

-Samurai; No comment.
-Dark World; Much like Dragon Rulers if you're doing this then you'd better be winning that turn seeing how Grapha NEVER DIES.

Now let me get one thing out of the way.  I'm talking about using Dark Hole at high level competition like a Regionals, WCS or Nats.  I'm not talking about Locals where you have random bad people trying to play Ice Barriers and flat out lose to the card.  I'm talking about a large venue with hundreds to thousands of skilled players running the best of the best.  Dueling Network and DevPro is also iffy due to the varying levels of pedigree with the players you get...but I'm willing to bet the high rated people running the best decks have been considering this too.

In regards to some of the reasonings;

"You have to run it because its a staple."
-Only because we have this mentality that because it's been a staple in the past its required now.  Isn't a staple card something so overwhelmingly strong that its useful in every situation whenever you draw it?  Look at the situation with Dark Hole compared to Monster Reborn and Heavy Storm.  Reborn and Storm are still fucking busted.  Dark Hole?  Not even near that much.

"You are bad for not running it."
-Argue with theory all you want but results speak for themselves.  I don't consider myself an amazing player but I am good enough to realize that sometimes I need to step back and take an unbiased look over a card.  Not only that but I'm not alone in this logic.  Look at the decklists of all the decks that have been topping in Japan for the entire format.  Dark Hole has been in and out of nearly every one of the best decks with it sliding more towards no mainboard play than yes.  Then there's the Pros that everyone goes out of their way to emulate and netdeck.  They're starting to think less of the card too (I'm talking highly regarded players like Perovic and the ARG Crew) which is really interesting as the same people who are bitching about Dark Hole being dropped from the top decks are the same ones that are just going to copy Parker Robinson's Dragon Ruler or Johnny Nguyen's Prophecy card for fucking card.

Again.  Argue with theory all you want but results speak for themselves.

"You need Dark Hole to beat X Deck."
-X deck being anything that's not Dragon Ruler, Evilswarm, Prophecy and Mermail.  Again it's adorable people think Dark Hole will singlehandedly win a game against said decks.  You Dark Hole their field then you HAVE to OTK them that turn or you are not any better off than before.

"Dark Hole allows you to have a chance with X deck when your opponent does BLARGH."
-This is one that I actually get alot when I post Dragunity Decklists.  The problem though with Decks like Dragunity or the top decks is that they're so consistent in setting up their boards that if the opponent is able to break through them, put a bunch of monsters on the field, NOT KILL you and leave you needing to top deck ONE SINGLE CARD to not lose the game...you've probably lost the game.  What I mean by this is for that kind of situation to occur your opponent would have to have godhanded you and frankly with how Yu-Gi-Oh! has devolved its rare that you're able to win against an opponent whenever they open the perfect hand.

Honestly the better card for this format is Torrential Tribute by far.  Its ability to be used during your opponent's combos is incredibly disrupting with all of the combo based decks in the format (but again...its also kind of waning in power), its chainable and at two.  Book of Moon is also a powerful card for its ability to be chained at almost any point making it a great response to chained Pandemics or Spellbook of Wisdom, sets Dracossack and can be used on your own monsters for neat tricks.  Or how about Evac Device?  Bouncing monsters is starting to become good again.

Look I can keep going and going on this but the fact of the matter is Dark Hole is at an all time low in terms of power with how decks are running in the game.  The reason its still seeing wide play is because of its staple status being part of the Unholy Trinity and people are naturally fixated on running it without question because of this.  They refuse to even think about dropping it to even the side and trying out that one card you've always wanted to fit in but could not.  I've tried explaining why I don't run the card in my own decks from time to time but so many people out there are thickheaded to the point that it's now a waste of time.  If someone ever makes a remark about a lack of Dark Hole in any of my videos that doesn't need it I will just flat out ignore it.

At least I can take comfort that the people that read this blog and are subscribed to my channel have better sense than those who I've just ranted about.  That said I'm done.