Dark Scorpion

The Dark Scorpions are a group of monsters, whose effects trigger when they inflict Battle Damage to their opponent, giving the controller a choice of two effects. The majority of these card effects disrupt the opponent's cards on the field, in their hand or in their deck, with the exception of "Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn", who searches out other Dark Scorpion cards with her effect. The Dark Scorpions have also been featured on certain Spell and Trap Cards. Don Zaloog was introduced in Pharaonic Guardian, Cliff in Magician's Force, and the rest in Dark Crisis.

Character design




The Dark Scorpion's outfits consists of a grey sleeveless, skin-tight top, featuring studs on the stomach, pants sectioned into grey and red layers and grey wristbands with red tips at the top. All members have a tattoo on their right arm of a scorpion. Each member carries their own weapon and sometimes features additional holsters on their costume for them.

All members appeared in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and wore civil disguises. Cliff appeared as a security guard, Gorg as a janitor, Meanae as a school nurse, Chick as a Slifer Red student, and Don Zaloog pretended to be a police detective dressed similarly to Sherlock Holmes.

Playing Style
Dark Scorpions are fairly weak physically and benefit greatly from Spell and Trap Cards that boost their power or weaken the opponent's monsters. "Mirror Wall", "Fairy Box" and "Shrink" can drastically cut an opponent's attacking monster's ATK, letting you do damage to trigger the Scorpion's effect. "Burden of the Mighty" works well, and another card that can be used is "The A. Forces", which boosts all Warriors' ATK for each Warrior you have. Combining "The A. Forces" with "Mustering of the Dark Scorpions" can both swarm the field and give you many strong monsters all at once.

"Don Zaloog" is the only Dark Scorpion that cannot be searched out or retrieved with "Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn" 's effect, so including some copies of "The Warrior Returning Alive" and "Reinforcement of the Army" will be handy in a Dark Scorpion deck,you should also have at least 3 copies of all the dark scorpions except Dark Scorpion - Gorg the Strong for a lot of good reasons. "Dark Armed Dragon" is very handy for clearing the field to let the Dark Scorpions attack. Their DARK Attribute also makes them eligible for Dark General Freed, protecting them from spells and searches some of them out. Another card that can be used is The Dark Creator and Dark Horus reviving them from the graveyard. There is also one way to destroy your opponent within a couple of turns, but you must have Dark Crusader and 3 Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn and a Fairy Box to do this combo. Use Crusaders effect to send DARK monsters for a ATK boost. If the Meanaes are out, attack with them and add a Dark Scorpion to your Hand, then send them to the Graveyard with Crusader. If you do this about 16 times, Dark Crusader can have a ATK of 8000 and then attack directly for a OTK(destroy any spells or traps if you can before attacking.)

Individually Dark Scorpions are a nuisance, but collectively they can play absolute havoc with your opponent's cards. Should you successfully activate "Dark Scorpion Combination" you may wish to give some thought as to which Dark Scorpion's abilities you use in what order. You may use Chick's ability to check the top of the opponent's deck, then use another Dark Scorpion's ability to send the top card of their deck to the Graveyard, or use Gorg's ability to send a monster to the top of the deck and then discard it the same way. The last move you should do after pulling off a Combination is using Meanae to retrieve the "Dark Scorpion Combination" card to play again your next turn.

A commonly used Trap card with Dark Scorpions, in general, is "Robbin' Goblin" and sometimes "Robbin' Zombie". Since the archetype focuses on inflicting Battle Damage to trigger effects (even if the damage is not great due to the Dark Scorpions being rather weak) those two cards will quickly deplete the opponent's hand and deck, especially if you activate Dark Scorpion Combination and hit the opponent five times in a turn. Another card that can combo easily with Dark Scorpions is "Armor Breaker", allowing you to destroy an opponent's card whenever you successfully inflict battle damage (on top of protecting the equipped Scorpion from destruction once).

Monsters

 * Don Zaloog
 * Dark Scorpion - Chick the Yellow
 * Dark Scorpion - Gorg the Strong
 * Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn
 * Cliff the Trap Remover
 * Dark Scorpion Burglars
 * Dark Armed Dragon
 * The Dark Creator
 * Dark Grepher
 * Dark General Freed
 * Shadow Delver
 * Mist Archfiend
 * Dark Crusader
 * Dark Horus
 * Armageddon Knight
 * Dark Resonator
 * Shadowpriestess of Ohm
 * Twin-Sword Marauder

Spells

 * Veil of Darkness
 * Dark Eruption
 * The A. Forces
 * Mustering of the Dark Scorpions
 * The Warrior Returning Alive
 * Reinforcement of the Army
 * Gold Sarcophagus
 * Shrink

Traps

 * Dark Scorpion Combination
 * Dark Illusion
 * Escape from the Dark Dimension
 * Fairy Box
 * Starlight Road

Extra Deck

 * Hundred-Eyes Dragon
 * Dark End Dragon
 * Chaos King Archfiend
 * Colossal Fighter
 * Stardust Dragon

Weaknesses and Counter-Strategies
Dark Scorpions have no tricks at all to survive on their own on the the battlefield, and are heavily dependent on Spell and Trap support to be effective--the opponent will be targeting your back row with Spell and Trap destroyers if they see you are running Dark Scorpions. Recent Deck archetypes also punish the use of the most common Dark Scorpion effects--Dark World cards reverse Hand destruction tactics, and Lightsworn and Dark counterpart decks thrive on having their cards sent from the deck straight to the Graveyard. Keep both of these in mind when using Dark Scorpions. Also, Gravekeeper's will lockdown your Graveyard and negate you from bringing back cards when trying to use The Dark Creator, Dark Armed Dragon, or Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn effects. This, however, can be avoided if you use cards that remove cards from play instead of them going to the Graveyard such as Dimensional Fissure, Macro Cosmos, Banisher of the Light, and Banisher of the Radiance.