Marik is a BAD Duelist I Yu-Gi-Oh Theory

Aye, that's me.

There's a difference between using the best option and relying on it marik is the latter without it he'd crumble

Marik might not be the best duelist but he is for sure the one wiht the COOLEST demenaour. Like all of his antics and his looks are so cool. In the sub he is soo sleaky and cool. His voice actoir is INSANE.

If you had a card to put ra out of play, it would be an easy duel

This isn't a theory
it's a fact

People forget that Yami Marik dominated Yugi throughout their duel. The one duel Yami Marik actually took seriously.

Bakura is a better duelist

In terms of antagonists I'd say

Pegasus cheated too much and relied on shadow magic against Yugi, therefore not a strong duelist.

Marik is very similar to Pegasus in that way and relies on Ra BS abilities, and therefore not a strong duelist.

Dartz may qualify as good, but I'm wondering if we can count him since the Oricalcos is so plot driven and even within the canon it's not a card that is printed by Industrial Illusions, it's just some magic that Dartz has from the ancient world so...eh...

Bakura may be a good duelist. Hear me out! He lost a lot, true. However, I can't think of any time when he relied on BS Shadow Magic. Anytime he duelled, he did it with his own deck and legit skill. Whenever he did lose, the opponent legit struggled, so it was not a simple/easy win. Against little Yugi in season 5, he gets Yugi down to a 1 turn or lose situation.

Gozoboro, nope (just nope)

Zigfried seems strong as does Leon. They duel with their abilities, yes Zig cheats during Leon's duel but it's established they are both quite capable even when not cheating.

Noah was only good because of rules he created in a world he controlled, so again, not a good duelist.

Yami might be questionable as a duelist, true due to his luck capabilities. However, I feel like this might be nullified because he frequently duels against cheaters. Therefore, cheating vs a cheater...I think that nullifies it so we're fine.

My thoughts on the antagonists vs Yami, at least.

I actually don't agree with this take. Marik cards are actually insane for the DM era. Ocasionaly i go on EdoPro and have fun with anime character decks, and Marik's deck is actually the best one (from the DM era), follow by Yugi and Kaiba. He has a counter for almost everything. You should try it, it's really fun 😁.
Marik's problem is that he is a sadist and likes to torture and toy with his opponets, not to mention way to damn cocky xD.

marik is just too arrogant, he'd rather torture his opponents than win 😂😂

This is actually true.

@Multiversal Studios: You wrong about the duel against yami yugi and string being possess by regular Marik, not he was posses by evil Marik, then during the duel against Mai valentine it was against Very evil Marik.

@Multiversal Studios: All egyption god card are effected by spell card but only for one turn, because in the animé if monster reborn special summoned a monster, even if it as been pass one turn, and only negated the spell effect of monster reborn that is no longer on the field in the animé the monster summoned by monster reborn return to the graveyard

That's not Marik. That's Melvin.

Lets be honest, its all plot armor because none of these combos are even viable in the TCG. so they work for the episodes in question, but thats about it

I say it again and a again: Do you really think Bakura is that stupid losing that easy while one duel before he employed a double kill strategy? He lost on purpose because that plays into his plans and winning wouldn't accomplish anything

It ain't a theory, his deck is on par with Atem's for most gimmicky.

People also forget that after Yami Marik defeated Yami Bakura, he took the Millennium Ring, which made his shadow powers stronger and added way more to shadow games BS. He knew that the Pharaoh himself was strong enough to prevent the shadow game from affecting his mind or body. So, with the added power of the Millennium Ring, he was able to bypass some of the Pharaoh's defenses and affect regular Yugi instead. That's how he was able to put himself in a shadow game against the Pharaoh that basically only affected his enemies. I mean let's face it, had the plot armor not kicked in, even if Yami Marik had lost the duel normally, he was not really putting himself in any danger and would've still lived. Basically further confirms that Marik was more Ra and Shadow Power reliant than having actual dueling skills. He is still a fantastic villain though, and arguably the best one in the series.

Marik had 2 combos that almos won hin the game in a fair way vs Joey, anticipated bakura+marik trying to steal ra and was once again in controll vs yugi who only survived thanks to kaiba's card. Quite impressive for a "bad duellist".
The duell vs mai is harder to evaluate but once mai took ra it was obvious she would try to summon it.

Id say Marik could have won against Joey if his strategy wasn't to torture his opponent. He could have won a lot of duels if he didn't drag them out.

Marik isn’t really a bad duelist per say, he’s just more focused on torturing his opponents than winning the duel. The only reason that he was about to lose to Joey is because he only used the immortal Phoenix ability to destroy Gilford, and maybe kill Joey, instead of doing that and then attacking directly. You can tell he wasn’t actually relying on his shadow game to win.

He's not a bad duelist but his over reliance to those God card infinite hacks dumbed him down heavily.

He won every single duel. Due to plot armor

Markit comes off more unbelievably lucky due to the plot his plans barely if at all works out in the end and with the Duel with String it was mostly stalling his ass off to get tokens onto the field which he would be better just getting 2 and just summoning out a monster for the third Tribute and in the end it blew up in his face cause he didn’t think to bring into account Yugi may have a card that Steals his monsters

Here’s the thing with the Mai duel: if Mai didn’t summon Ra, she could have beaten Marik by just attacking with her Harpie Ladies. If she hadn’t tried to flex with Ra, she still would have won

I honestly think that the question is why Strings has Slifer in the first place?

When an opponent summons Ra and it comes out in the form of an orb to just troll 😂

brother you literally said that he had the skills to give yugi a back a forth and manage to play around the egyptian gods without one of his on and then not even 5 seconds after you said "how far would he really go on his?" what the hell? you even have a whole ass short saying that jounouchi would have lost if marik had really taken him seriously. I'll say that marik isn't as good as kaiba, bakura or yugi/atem but he is definitely one of the strongest duelist of DM, I do not see him losing to jounouchi or mai, he simply wanted to toy with them but he didn't need such tricks, however with the other duelists it was clear he had the ability to really give them a fight greater than those 2 would have given them. you could argue his good side was better but there's no real way to prove that either, furthermore he edited his deck himself against bakura and still managed to be a very tough opponent.. that's not something you just do if you weren't half as good as the original owner of the deck.

i respect this theory a lot because you actually analyzed these duels and in the end your final statement is very logical, thanks.

There's also the duel with possesed Joey, where Marik also created that deck and in that duel it was Yugi who had BS mechanics helping him as the fact that him dueling as his normal self, giving joey his puzzle and summoning red eyes weakened Marik's control over him which bought Yugi some time during the duel

But dont forget: he really is
THE MASTER OF DOORS

Idea: What if Serenity and Miho were the main duo instead of Joey & Yugi respectively? they're my favorite characters

lol marik is the only guy who knows the game in the whole yugioh

I would like to disagree about the Strings duel. That combo is overly greedy, and Yugi took advantage and exploited a big weakness in the combo, which led to Yugi winning. If Marik didn't rely on such a greedy combo, he may have won.

Yes. I've been saying this for a while

This isn't just a "theory" it's a very popular belief from many fans for many years.

Isn't this just canon? Marik primarily relies on other people to duel for him, and when he does duel himself, he wins by causing his opponents physical pain to throw them off or make them surrender, and when that doesn't work, he relies entirely on the pure power of Ra. He's a "Strong Duelist" in that he has actual magic on his side and manages to win more often than not, but he's never described as being particularly skilled.

Yami already beat Marik twice before the semi-finals of Battle City even start.

Of the 5 duels Marik was in which was seen he lost 2 and won 3. 2 losses to Yugi and he should've lost to: Mai, Joey, & Bakura but won due to plot armor. Not a great record plus the dub did hurt his more evil Japanese version via censorship. Personalizing the Shadow Games was a really good idea. To be fair Yu-Gi-Oh as a franchise did have a lot of plot armor/bullshit for both heroes & villains

No Marik is really a mastermind. He created all those decks that his mind slaves used like the one against Yugi one of his servants using Slifer had with an almost UNBEATABLE strategy that was far more in depth and thought out than any other decks used in the show at the time. I love Marik and i constantly rewatch him summoming Ra over and over again, he is one of the all time best characters to ever exist in yugioh. 🔥🔥🔥

Marik is my favorite villain so uhhhh, youre wrong.

There are also two competing arguments you could've made here:

1) You present the argument that Marik over-relies on the Egyptian Gods, particularly Ra, during his duels. And sure, he does build his decks around his boss monster. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. In the real life game, there are extremely powerful boss monsters that you either have to build your deck around or risk bricking on them if you can't use them. The two real questions are how well he can bounce back when his opponent finds an answer to his boss monster (which he arguably does when he's forced to sacrifice Ra after Yami Yugi uses Fiend Sanctuary), and what kind of deck would he build if he wasn't relying on a God card.

2) With that as a segue, remember that he was also the leader of the Rare Hunters. He would have access to almost any Duel Monsters card ever printed. So on top of asking what kind of deck would he build if he wasn't relying on one God card or another, also consider that he had access to virtually all of Duel Monster's card library up to that point in the series, and this was the deck he chose to build.

Yes, Marik and Pegasus are bad duelists, Marik uses magic to cheat even with a broken card, and Pegasus has a literal custom deck only for him that only he can have because he made the game, and he mind reads via magic too...

Marik relying on cheating manipulation Ra and ancient egyptian magic is litteraly his whole character. Joey would've won if it's want for his injuries

Lliterally every duel he won, he did so because of plot armor.

I dont think he is weak the anime protray him weak the manga does him a bit better but his stats are higher than joey the gospel of truth will show you what level marik is on and he is above joey and sort of on the same level as pegasus i even went back and watch the manga with him vs joey he wasnt doin rubbish in that duel but the ending part where he was defence less was something by the creators after he summons ra but no he isnt rubbish he was doin good against mai and joey in the manga but the last two parts with ra is what mess him up i always called on ra ra maybe is bestfriend and against yugi he was doin good as well

That's a LIE!!! I REMEMBER more of the Joey vs Yami Marik duel than just the end!!

Besides, you know a character from the anime is a terrible duelist when they defeat themselves in a video game; I made my way through the pyramid & faced Yami Marik in Yu-Gi-Oh: Stairway to the Destined Duel on GameBoy Advance SP, & had my Spell & Trap zone full up with facedown cards. The idiot had no cards left in his deck, PLAYED CARD DESTRUCTION, & automatically lost to me when he couldn't draw from his deck!!

One of Marik's best stall cards in my opinion is plasma eel which still hasn't been released as a physical card in the ocg or tcg yet. It can be turbo'd out with machine duplication and is an easy 3 monsters for a Ra tribute and it has the plus side of not being able to be destroyed by battle. Sure most of Marik's monsters don't fit a common type or archetype to be used together effectively, but I still say he is one of the best villains in the TV show, striking fear and inflicting torture into his opponents with his large variety of sinister monster cards (also some used by the rare hunters).