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Some antagonists in the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' franchise don't just play games, they play their games [[Magnificent Bastard|exceptionally well.]] 
[[File:Dark_Bakura.png|thumb|376px|Bakura controls the game board of fate.]]
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* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'' brings us Rex Goodwin; a very different villain given the genre. For all of the first season, he operates behinds behind the scenes, manipulating the Five Signers in order to force them to reveal themselves. For example, in order to get Yusei Fudo to participate in his tournament, he kidnaps his friends and threatens him with their deaths. Yeah. Even after that, while the Signers remain suspicious of his motivations (including his prodigy, Jack Atlas) they still trust him as [[Evil Mentor|a mentor and benefactor.]] And the kicker; it's revealed that his reasons for this were [[Anti-Villain|inherently noble]], and he has received no comeuppance for his actions. And throughout all of this, he has maintained a [[Affably Evil|calm, friendly demeanor]].
** And then it's revealed that {{spoiler|he used both the good guys and the bad guys for not so noble purposes}}, which makes him even more magnificent and even more of a bastard!
* Pegasus from the original series.
** Bakura from the original series is perhaps an even bigger example. In his debut appearance, he's shown to be the Phaoroh's equal in being a master of all games and he manipulates all events to fit in with his "game." Afterwards, he begins a [[Gambit Roulette]] that lasts for the remainder of the series and almost brings  {{spoiler|Zorc Necrophedes, the Dark One}} into the living world. Not to mention that he's [[Evil Is Cool|gleefully]] [[Large Ham|deliciously]] and [[Evil Is Sexy|charismatically]] evil the whole way through. 
*** Up until the [[Final Battle]], that is, when he loses the duel against Yugi by making one of the most boneheaded misplays in the entire franchise. 
** Dartz had 10,000 years to complete his master plan, and it shows. He's set everything up so that no matter whether he and his minions win or lose, he still wins. He is the richest and most powerful man in the world owning a tiny piece of every company on Earth, and has enough capital to buy out Kaiba-Corp for no other reason than to provoke Kaiba. He has supernatural powers that outshine anything Yami Yugi has in his arsenal (The Power of Friendship excluded, naturally), has assembled the most broken deck in the series, and survived monster armies, Egyptian Gods and the loss of his own soul before he was defeated.

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