Dark Scorpion

"Dark Scorpion", known as "Black Scorpion" ( Kurosasori) in Japan, is an archetype 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 field, hand or deck, with the exception of "Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn," who searches out other "Dark Scorpion" cards. The "Dark Scorpions" have been featured on numerous 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. All members have a tattoo on their right arm of a scorpion. Each member carries a distinct weapon, and sometimes feature 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 as a police detective in a Sherlock Holmes guise.

Playing style
"Dark Scorpions" are fairly weak physically, but 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, allowing for damage to trigger the Scorpion's effect. "Burden of the Mighty" and "The A. Forces" work well. 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 a copy of "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"and Dark Scorpion - Chick the Yellow 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 "Crusader's" effect to send DARK monsters for a ATK boost. 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). Because Chick's and Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn have their ATK's 1000, Crush Card Virus would destroy lots of troublesome monsters.

Monsters

 * Don Zaloog
 * Dark Scorpion - Chick the Yellow
 * Dark Scorpion - Gorg the Strong
 * Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn
 * Dark Scorpion - Cliff the Trap Remover
 * Dark Armed Dragon
 * Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind
 * Dark General Freed
 * Marauding Captain
 * Thunder King Rai-Oh
 * Cyber Dragon
 * Dark Resonator (if you are using synchro)
 * Dark Tinker(if you are using synchro)

Spells

 * Allure of Darkness
 * Dark Eruption
 * Swords of Revealing Light
 * The Warrior Returning Alive
 * Mustering of the Dark Scorpions
 * Reinforcement of the Army
 * Shrink
 * Gravekeeper's Servant
 * Card Destruction
 * Infected Mail

Traps

 * Dark Scorpion Combination
 * Dark Illusion
 * Escape from the Dark Dimension
 * Fairy Box
 * Raigeki Break

Extra Deck

 * Hundred Eyes Dragon
 * Dark End Dragon
 * Chaos King Archfiend
 * Colossal Fighter
 * Steelswarm Roach
 * Red Nova Dragon
 * Stardust Dragon
 * Iron Chain Dragon
 * Red Dragon Archfiend
 * Number 32: Shark Drake

Weaknesses and Counter-Strategies
Dark Scorpions have no tricks at all to survive on their own on th field, and are heavily dependent on Spell and Trap support to be effective; your opponent will be targeting your backrow Spells and Traps 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 benefit from hand destruction tactics, and "Lightsworn" and Dark counterpart Decks thrive on having their cards sent from the Deck to the Graveyard. Keep both of these in mind when using Dark Scorpions. Also, "Gravekeeper's" Decks will lockdown your Graveyard and negate you from bringing back cards when trying to use the effects of "The Dark Creator", "Dark Armed Dragon" or "Dark Scorpion - Meanae the Thorn". However, these can be avoided if you use cards that banish cards instead of them going to the Graveyard, such as "Dimensional Fissure", "Macro Cosmos", "Banisher of the Light" and "Banisher of the Radiance".