Prophecy wins European Championship

I've fallen with my bike this week, so my right arm is in a cast. Because of that, short post.

This weekend was (the largest ever) European Championship in Germany. 1152 contestants made this an event to remember.

And in the end, Prophecy won from Dragon Rulers in the final. Chris Bountaloudis gave Greece its first continental award.

Read the isnals report over here. over here: https://tcg.konami-europe.net/coverage/14328/final-feature-match-michel-gruner-dragon-rulers-vs-chris-bountaloudis-spellbooks/

Decklist will probably follow in the upcoming week.

Signing out with one hand... V out.

PS: The list of champs remains updated each few days.

Edit: Lithium uploaded the deck profile on his youtube channel. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kadIpxw5830

Card Rulings - Psi Blocker

Prohibition has always been one of my favorite cards in my side-deck. It's like an out to any rogue deck you have a bad match-up to. And since a month or so, Psi-Blocker (the monster version of this card) is seeing an increased use in play.

With the return of this card, ruling questions obviously rise on what you can or cannot do with cards declared by the effect of Psi-Blocker.

So without further ado, here's the Psi-Blocker list

"People also call me Cock-Blocker!"

What you cannot do with a card declared by Psi-Blocker:

The declared monster name...

• cannot be normal summoned or set.
• cannot be special summoned (inherently).
• cannot be used as fusion, synchro or XYZ material.
• cannot attack.
• cannot manually change its battle position.
• use its effect, if it is an effect that starts a chain (this includes mandatory effects).
• cannot apply its continuous effect.
• If cards like Phantom of Chaos or Elemental HERO Prisma copied the name of the declared monster name, they cannot battle/use its effect, because they became the declared monster name.

The declared Fusion, Synchro, Ritual or XYZ monster...

• Cannot be fusion/synchro/ritual/or xyz summoned properly.
• For the rest, the same rules apply as regular monsters.

The declared Spell or Trap card...

• cannot be activated or apply any of its effects.
• cannot apply any of its continuous effects (if it's already active)
• Cannot be set manually.

What you can do with a card declared by Psi-Blocker:

The declared monster name...

• Can be used to pay a cost (example: Trade-in, Enemy Controller, Sacred Sword of Seven Stars, etc).
• can be added to your hand from any card location by legal card effects (example: Reinforcement of the Army, Eclipse Wyvern, etc).
• Can be special summoned (from any location) by other card effects (example: monster reborn, Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, Spellbook of Life, etc).
• Can be used with Future Fusion (regular fusion doesn't work, though).
• can be used to summon an other monster (tribute summon, special summons, etc).
• can change its battle position by card effect (example: Book of Moon, Photon papilloperative, etc).
• Can apply still lingering effects (example: Shock Master's already active effect).
• can chain its effect to the activation of Psi Blocker's effect, if possible (example: Photon Strike Bounzer, Light and Darkness Dragon, Maxx "C").
• doesn't matter much if it's Exodia the Forbidden one. The victory condition of Exodia still applies.

The declared Spell or Trap card...

• can be used as a cost (example: Summoner Monk, Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell, etc).
• Can be added to the hand by other card effects (example: Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo, Spellbook of Secrets, etc).
• Can be set by card effect (example: Alchemic Magician, Fire Fist - Tiger King, etc.).
• can be evaded by using other cards that copy the effect of the declared card (example: Spellbook of the Master's target).
• can apply its still lingering effect (example: the still lingering effect of Spellbook of Power).
• can be chained to the activation of the effect (if possible).

General things you should know:

• Psi Blocker can affect cards that are already on the field. This is a textual difference with Prohibition. Psi-Blocker does not have an equivalent to Prohibition's last sentence.
• With Prohibition, if you declare a card name that is already on the field, and the affected card is sent to the grave, or it's banished, it will continue to be unaffected by prohibition, until it enters another location. Example: The first effect of Eclipse Wyvern will apply if it is sent from the field to the graveyard. Its second effect (return the banished monster to the hand) CANNOT be applied if you banish Wyvern afterwards.
• You can only declare cards that are legal card names in the TCG (so no using OCG names, fanboys). This also extends to cards that alter their original name. For example, "Harpie Lady 2" cannot be declared. You must declare "Harpie Lady", since "Harpie Lady 2" alters its name to "Harpie lady".
• If your opponent DID intentionally set the mentioned card and is later revealed, you may call a judge (penalties will occur). But please make sure your opponent knows that he cannot set the mentioned card.
• "End of the opponents turn" means the literal end, not just the end phase! So no activating mentioned quick-play spells!
• The effect of Psi Blocker is Lingering. This means that even if you get rid of the card (or place it face-down), the effect still applies.

Afterword

That's it for now. Until next time, V out.

Note: This list is unofficial as far as the TCG goes, but is a useful reference. As it currently stands, there are no rulings from a TCG official source regarding Prohibition or Psi-Blocker. In the event this does change, any differences will be updated, but you should use the one provided by Konami before this one.

PS: This list is taken from the Yugioh Judges facebook group with some small clarifications of my own. If you spot a mistake, please mention it.

The New Black Luster Soldier and other new chaos cards

Once every few months, V-Jump publishes a pack of 5 new cards. Last pack was last December, so it’s time for a new pack! The V-Jump of August (which will contain the new F&L list, btw) will contain the next V-jump promo cards. And they’re all Chaos-related!

The new BLS, it’s BS

The main card everybody was looking forward to, is the new BLS: Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Twilight. And look at it, the art is awesome!

But then look at that effect:

Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must be Special Summoned (from your hand) by having an equal number of LIGHT and DARK monsters in your Graveyard and banishing all monsters of 1 of those Attributes from your Graveyard, and cannot be Special Summoned by other ways. While face-up on the field, this card is also LIGHT-Attribute. When this card is Special Summoned: You can activate 1 of these effects, depending on the Attribute of the monster(s) banished for its Special Summon. You cannot conduct your Battle Phase during the turn you activate this effect. ● LIGHT: Banish 1 monster on the field, face-up. ● DARK: Banish 1 random card from your opponent's hand, face-down, until your opponent's End Phase.

This basically means that BLS will ONLY have an effect when it’s summoned by this condition (and only then). If you summon it with (for example) Monster Reborn, it will have no effect (booh!). Not only that, but having an equal number of Light and dark monsters makes it kind of annoying to summon, not to mention the fact that you have to banish all LIGHT or DARK monsters from your grave (booh!). It also has that condition that it’s both LIGHT and DARK (okay, that’s kind of normal, but easy to counter with Gozen Match). Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that you have to skip your battle phase the turn you actually DO use the effect (BOOH!).

Tl;dr? IT SUCKS!

Light and Dark Gaia Knight

Just like BLS, Gaia the Fierce Knight has been re-used in many different cards (Swift Gaia the Fierce Knight (effect), Gaia the Dragon Champion (fusion), Gaia Kight the Force of Earth (synchro), Gaia Drake the Universal Force (synchro fusion), Gaia Dragon the Thunder Charger (XYZ) and now thus the Light and Dark Chaos monsters. Here comes Gaia, Knight of the Dark Nights and Gaia, Knight of the Bright Nights (oooh, look at the word play). (Wikia says Polar Nights and White Nights, but TCG print will determine the TCG name)

Both have similar effects, with opposing attributes. You can use both effects once per turn:

• Tribute one other DARK/LIGHT monster, to add 1 Lv. 4 LIGHT/DARK (resp.) warrior from your deck to your hand and then send 1 card from your hand to the grave.
• Banish 1 LIGHT/DARK monster from your grave to either boost your monster’s attack or lower your opponent’s monster attack.

These monsters are searchers and provide sufficient imagination for chaos warrior decks (though seriously, why the “-1” on their effect?). The first things that come to mind are Destiny HERO’s and Light Beat Warriors or Noble Knights.

New Primal Seed and new Exchange of the Spirit

This whole pack reeks of nostalgia. The provided spell card (Chaotic Seed) is a wink to Primal Seed, while the trap, Exchange of Dawn and Dusk (or First Light and twilight, depending on the translation) is a nod to the long-time forbidden card: Exchange of the Spirit.

The spell goes as follows: If you control a Light and Dark monster (or a monster that has both attributes), you can add 1 banished LIGHT or DARK warrior to your hand. They added the once per turn clause to prevent abuse (yeah, that’s the sole reason why Primal Seed is still limited in the first place).

The trap basically reads: Dump 1 LIGHT/DARK warrior from your hand to the grave to add 1 warrior of the opposing attribute and the same level from your deck to your hand. These two cards bring stability to the Chaos warrior deck. It ensures you have that right DARK/LIGHT warrior (Armageddon Knight, Dark/Light Grepher, etc), and allows you to recycle banished warriors, like D-HERO Malicious.

So how can you use these cards?

Well, its cards like these that give the opportunity to mix, remix and experiment! You can use these cards and…:

• Use them in a D.D. deck. Warrior lady is Light, Survivor is Dark. And these cards smell like pure chaos (hint: Chaos Zone).
• Mix them with Destiny HERO’s and Light Warriors like Neos Alius, Photon Thrasher and Noble Knight Gawayn. Destiny Draw remains a good engine.
• Mix Constellars with Destiny HERO: Pollux is a Light Lv. 4 warrior, Constellar Alrescha is a Lv. 6 LIGHT warrior. Diamond Dude is a Dark Lv. 4; Malicious is Lv. 6.
• Mix Lightrays with Dark Warriors. Lightray Gearfried is hard to get on the field, but once it’s there, it’s a boss!
• Remix Chaos Ninja Dragons. Remember the variant of Chaos Dragons that uses Ninja’s? Time to upgrade them with these cards, to easily search Golden Ninja and Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo. It adds a much-needed consistency to this deck.
• And you can probably think of other combinations I didn’t even think of yet.

Since I love Chaos decks, so I guess it’s time to experiment! Let’s hope the September F&L list isn’t too hard on the Chaos archetype (read as: let’s hope this B(L)S doesn’t cause the good BLS to become forbidden). And then let’s hope these cards (and Collapserpent + Wyburstar) gain a TCG-print soon.

That’s it for now, V out.

PS: Note: these are OCG-names and translated by fans. Names may change upon release in TCG.

PPS: Rest of Battle Pack 2 is now revealed as well. No further surprises noticed.

Battle Pack 2 Revelations and the general GOOD support of Shadow Specters

Two topics today, both are about “revealed cards”. First up, the newly revealed cards of Battle Pack 2!

Battle Pack 2: Reprint season alert!

Aah, Yu-Gi-Oh reprint season. It’s the time were prize hunters try to get rid of their foil cards at the highest possible price, or keep praying that their collection of money cards doesn't get hit by a stray reprint bullet. The season starts in June with packs like Gold Series (surprisingly absent this year), the August tins, the Battle Pack, a new Duelist League pack, a new Structure Deck, the Legendary Collections, a new Astral pack and closes with the November tins.

First up this year is Battle Pack 2. Until last weekend, most of the revealed cards weren't noteworthy. But last weekend that changed, when the European shops received their boxes and some just couldn't wait to open them. But unlike any Konami article on the pack, these revelations WERE interesting. These are some of the revealed cards that I consider interesting:

• Sinister Serpent: One of those classic forbidden cards that will never get off the list. Kind of hard to obtain as well, so this reprint is good.
• Plaguespreader Zombie: Used to be such an amazing card! Will be great again once Shadow Specters will be released! So pick up your copies!
• Chaos Hunter: Annoyingly hard to obtain and a nice first reprint. Also, it's a nice tech versus Dragon Rulers!
• Tour Bus from the Underworld & Tardy Orc: I kind of laughed at these two cards. They were overhyped at their release, and thus failed to meet expectations. The cards are not that great after all. Strange to see them reprinted in “this” set, since they’re not that great in sealed play either (Giant Orc >> Tardy Orc).
• Cardcar D: GREAT! This is a great addition to any battle pack and a lot of people were expecting this. Now it’s actually confirmed.
• Mermail Abyssmegalo: I nearly coughed up my coffee when seeing this and a confirmation picture. Here? Battle Pack reprint? Good for the Mermail fans trying to obtain a not-so-pricy version. But how good is this card going to work in Battle Pack?
• Mecha Phantom Beast Hamstrat: Seriously? This soon? Well, I guess that will please MPB-fans at least. This at least means that a MPB deck will be a bit cheaper (considering Dracosack is a +100$ card).
• The Forbidden Trio (Chalice, Lance & Dress): Sucks to be you if you recently bought your copy of Dress/Lance for 10-15$. They’re getting a(nother) reprint. The forbidden trio works in any version of the Battle pack, so they will always have a chance of reprint in these kind of sets.
• Shard of Greed: Never should’ve been a secret rare, so it’s nice to see this card reprinted.
• The Golden Apples: Interesting reprint. Hardly saw this secret rare card in any binder, even though nobody played it. Card is like Gorz, but in trap form.
• Overworked: Nice reprint of this Short print card. Will be necessary for the September format, because I doubt Fire Fists will get hit (hard).
• Breakthrough Skill: I’m surprised. Didn’t expect a reprint of this card this soon. But it’s nice either way. More and more people are seeing that this card is useful, so a reprint at this point can only be good.

With Battle Pack still not being the most expensive set, it’s interesting to buy with revelations like these. I wonder what other cards will be revealed this week (set comes out this thursday/friday).

If cards like these three don't convince you of BP2
Then I guess nothing will...

Shadow specter: Good, better, amazing

The next booster set that will be released in the OCG is Shadow Specters. Release date is July 20th. For the TCG, we will see this set somewhere in November.

With the launch of this new set coming closer, the latest V-Jump gave us a sneak peek of what’s to come in this set. And a lot of people (including me) were amazed at the revelations. I’ll give you a “cards to look forward to” post when the set is fully revealed, but let me just post a few of the cards that got people hyped.

Granmarg the Hard Earth/Solid Rock Monarch: The first of the advanced Monarchs is introduced. These variants are Lv. 8, but can also be summoned by tributing a Tribute Summoned Monster (a monarch, obviously). The effect: Same as Granmarg, but this card destroys 2 cards instead of one. And if you tributed an earth monster (another Granmarg), you also get a draw. There are more free slots in this set, so I have the feeling we’re going to see MORE of these advanced Monarchs.

Unearthing of the Monarchs: If Advanced Monarchs weren’t enough, here’s a spell that you will remember. Why? Because this card is a Black Whirlwind/Wind-up Factory for Monarchs. When you tribute summon a monster, you can either search a regular monarch, or an advanced monarch. Only downside is the same as "March of the Monarchs". It remains on the field, so it blocks the Frog Monarchs variant.

Vampires: Yeah, the "old" archetype that gets a boost this time around is nothing less than Vampires. And while the set supports "cutie" zombies in their new (seemingly bad) archetype Ghostrick, the Vampires have good, dark artwork that deserves a round of applause. More on these new vampires in a future post.

Tree Spirit of the Meliaes: This XYZ requires 2 Lv. 3 earth monsters and either sends a plant monster from your deck to the grave (Dandylion or Spore) or special summons a plant monster from your grave (re-using Lonefire Blossom). Plant Synchro decks & Gigaplant OTK decks can rejoice (though this makes it quite unlikely that Glow-up Bulb would ever return, lol).

Pot of Duplicity: After the watered-down version of Pot of Greed (Pot of Duality), we now get a Watered-down version of Pot of Avarice in the form of this card. This card forces you to skip the battle phase and only works by sending 3 monsters of different types from your grave to the deck (still a plus-1). So obviously it cannot be used in many decks. But in the decks where this card DOES work, it will work even better than Pot of Avarice ever would (Evilswarm decks, Chaos decks, Norleras decks, Mystic Piper decks, etc). A word of advice: don’t underestimate this card; because having consistency and control is more powerful than having a battle phase.

Grisaille Gaol: You can see this card will pop up In Monarch and HERO decks as a side-deck card. When this card is active and you control a fusion/tributed/ritual monster, neither player can synchro or xyz summon and the effects of face-up xyz/synchro’s is negated.

Mistake: Neither player can add cards to their hands, except by drawing them. At this point in the meta, it’s the most anti-meta card there is. Every meta archetype searches cards. This card is an ideal “f**k-you” to your opponent, if you’re done searching and want to prevent your opponent from searching cards. Beware that if your deck focuses on searching that this card can easily backfire.

Makes you wonder what the other "advanced" Monarchs will be, huh?

There are more interesting cards in the set (though not as hyped), but I’ll keep those for when the set is fully revealed.

That’s it for now. V out.

PS: Yeah, the starter deck is out as well. Wonder why I didn't cover that before? Because it's EXACTLY the same as the OCG-variant (I covered that one). But instead of 2x5 cards in 1 pack, we got 1x10 cards in a pack, making it very easy to obtain all 15 extra cards.

Yugioh update week #1: Belgian YCS - it's not a joke

Always the same. The one week you're off going to some festivals and music concerts and don't have time to check the internet, Yu-Gi-Oh provides us with many updates. You should've seen my surprised look when I logged into my pc yesterday.

The OCG-set of Shadow Specters has been filled to 5/6 of all cards; the cards of the next (OCG) V-Jump pack have been revealed (Chaos cards, yeeeey) and the next European YCS has been revealed.

I'll give you a few noteworthy cards of those revealed cards in the next few days, but today's post will be about that next European YCS... in Belgium!

Wait, where?

If you're not from Europe, you're probably not familiar with the European YCS-policies (or at least something I thought was a policy).

Basically it goes as follows: European YCS's are focused in countries with a Konami (branch) office. So, this means the UK, Germany, France and Spain. Italy's another frequent visit, even though it doesn't have a branch (but they do have Italian cards). Other countries don't receive YCS's (with the exception of Netherlands receiving the World Championship two years ago, but that's not really a YCS, huh :-P ).

Because of this situation, it's been an frequently recurring rumor for a few years now that Belgium will receive a YCS, but it never happens. Though I bet this is the same in other countries that didn't have a YCS yet.

So you can understand my surprise to see that years-old rumor suddenly become a reality with this news flash: http://www.yugioh-card.com/uk/news/news_ycsbrussels.html.

A YCS in the country of beer, fries, chocolates and waffles

As a Belgian myself, I am thus proud to announce that the first upcoming YCS will be in Brussels, Belgium on August 31 and September 1st.

This YCS will be a Battle Pack YCS (probably due to the date of old-format/new-format). The Event place is unknown as of yet, but there's only a handful of places they can choose from (Tour & Taxis, Brussels Expo, or some privately rented place).

I say first upcoming, because the other revealed European YCS (YCS London) will take place in October (exact date unknown as of yet).

I'll provide more details of this YCS once they're known.

See you next time. A happy V out.

PS: I'll keep updating the nationals post, so if you have info on the missing spots, please provide it! Thanks in advance!

List of Nationals / Continental Champs and decklist links (if available)

Let's keep this post informative for everyone. This is the list of National Champs all over the world and continental representatives.

I'll keep this post updated every week with all new info available. If you can fill in the blanks, please let me know.

Europe

Date	Country	Winner	Deck used	Decklist
April 20	Ireland	Jonathan Waters	Mono Mermail	Decklist available
May 5	Austria	Noko Prokic	Dark World Creator Turbo	Decklist available
May 18-19	Belgium	Bernard Jean-Lou	Mono Mermail	Decklist available
May 18-19	Germany	Tran Duc	Chain Burn	Decklist available
May 18-19	United Kingdom	Tom Paine	Mono Mermail	Decklist available
May 18	Sweden	Adam Ask	Mermail	N.A.
May 19	Netherlands	Rafael Neven	Mermail	Decklist available
May 25-26	France	Alain Ly	Dragon Rulers	N.A.
May 25	Slovenia	Miha Flisek	Mermails	Only finals video
June 1-2	Italy	Stefano Lenti Livraghi	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available (scroll down)
June 1-2	Spain	Rodrigo Torores	Dragon Rulers	Decklist Available
June 1	Switzerland	Roman Kieser	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
June 2	Bulgaria	Marino Kunchev	Unknown	N.A.
June 8-9	Czech Republic
June 8-9	Denmark	Mads Mikelsen	Evilswarm	Decklist Available
June 9	Malta	Ryan Dyer	Unknown
June 9	Norway	Christopher Reyes	Unkown
June 15-16	Portugal	Hélio Babo	Dragon Rulers	Only finals report
June 15	Croatia	Urh Kovačić	Dragon Rulers	Decklist Available
June 15	Lithuania	Žilvino Volsko	Gladiator Beasts	Only finals video
June 15	Finland	Tom Thureson	Evilswarm	Decklist Available
June 16	Poland	Przemysław Strzałka	Dragon Rulers	Decklist Available
June 23	Greece	Vassilis Stamatiadis	Prophecy	Decklist available

Central and South-America

Date	Country	Winner	Deck used	Decklist
May 18-19	Costa Rica	Tomas Jimenez	Prophecy	Decklist available
May 18-19	Mexico	Léonardo Sanchez	Kristya Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
May 18	Argentina	Nicolas Godoy	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
May 18	Chile	Sebastian Mora	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
May 18	Jamaica	Unknown	Mermails	N.A.
May 18	Venezuela	Edwin Rodriguez	Dragon Rulers	Decklist Available
May 19	Colombia	Juan Cujia	Dragon Rulers	N.A.
May 19	Dominican Republic	Yorguin Medina	Prophecy	Decklist available
May 19	Guatemala	Alejandro Cañas	Mermails	Decklist available
May 19	Honduras	Leonel Ortega	Fire Fist	Decklist available
May 19	Nicaragua	Allan Zepada	Prophecy	Decklist available
May 25-26	Brazil	Ivan Ferreira de Lima Junior	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
May 25	Bolivia	Aaron Beltran	Dragon Rulers	N.A.
May 25	Ecuador	Ivan Fiallos	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
May 26	El Salvador	Frank Arce	Dragon Rulers	Decklist Available
May 26	Panama	Rolando Gordon	Karakuri OTK	Decklist Available
May 25-26	Peru	Gerardo Delgado	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available

Africa

Date	Country	Winner	Deck used	Decklist
May 25	South-Africa	Jivesh Dhanraj	Prophecy	#

Asia - Middle-East (TCG)

Date	Country	Winner	Deck used	Decklist
May 16th	Israel	Ido M.	Evilswarm	Decklist available
May 26	Turkey	Murat Bıçakçı	Evilswarm	Decklist available (register on forum)

Oceania

Date	Country	Winner	Deck used	Decklist
April 27	New Zealand	Chris Dalton	Tele-Karakuri	Decklist available
June 8-9	Australia	Marcus Wheeler	Prophecies	Decklist available

Asia (OCG)

Date	Country	Winner	Deck used	Decklist
May 26	Thailand	Weerapun Suebyoubol "Pink"	Dragon Rulers	Decklist Available
June 15	Philippines	Irwin Arogo	Dragon Rulers	Decklist Available
June 23	South Korea	Park Jin Woo	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
June 23	Singapore	William Oh	Dragon Ruler	Decklist available
June 29-30	Malaysia	Zack Teoh	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
June 30	Hong Kong	Cheung Wing Ho	Dragon Rulers
June 29	Japan - Tokyo	Joker	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
July 6	Japan - Osaka	Atsushi	Blue-Eyes Prophecy	Decklist available
July 7	Taiwan	Shi-En Huang	Dragon Rulers

Continental Championships (TCG)

Date	Continent	Location	Winner	Deck used	Decklist
June 10	Oceania	Penrith, Australia	Chris Matiske	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
June 28-30	Europe	Frankfurt, Germany	Chris Bountaloudis	Prophecy	Decklist available
June 28-30	South America	Guayaquil, Equador	Carlos Andres Perez Padilla	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available
July 5-7	Central America	Monterrey, Mexico	Alejandro Vivaldo Reyes Suarez	Dragon Ruler
July 12-14	North America	Chicago, USA	Patrick Hoban	Dragon Rulers	Decklist available

Notes

• Luxembourg (Europe) did not have Nationals. The link on Konami's website referred to the Belgian Nationals.
• Cyprus (Europe) did not have Nationals. The link on Konami's website referred to the Turkish Nationals.
• While Turkey and Israel are officially part of Asia, they play the TCG instead of the OCG. Because of this, they're part of Europe in terms of qualifiers.
• Since there is no African WC Qualifier, South-Africa tags along with Europe in terms of Qualifiers.
• If you know of information that's not in the list yet, put it in the comments below. All help is appreciated.

Updates

• Update 07/06: Updated Venezuela, Equador and Argentina thanks to Carlos Julio - Source: http://kabras-yugiohtcg.blogspot.com
• Update 2 (same day): Also found and added the information of Italy, Peru, El Salvador and Dominican Republic.
• Update 9/06: Mike from High-Level Gaming gave us the info on who became the Aussie champ.
• Update 10/06: Updates - Added info of Danish and Swiss Nationals and Oceanian Continentals
• Update 11/06: Added the decklist of the Australian Champ, thanks to High Level Gaming (FB).
• Update 12/06: Added the decklist of the Oceanian champion, thanks to HLG.
• Update 15/6: Added information on the Turkish winner, added Philippine representative.
• Update 20/6: Updated nationals of Croatia, Poland, Finland. Also added the decklist of the Philippine winner (link to his blog).
• Update 24/6: Added info on Greece, the champs of Singapore (thanks to YGO-Singapore on FB & High Level Gaming) and Thailand, and the (correctl) schedule of OCG-qualifiers (last part thanks to the "Road of the King" blog).
• Update 26/6: Found a Konami article with the Latin American champs (This post), also found the Swedish champ (google translate helps). And via analyzing the updated qualified list of Europe I found the names of the Bulgarian, Maltese, Norwegian and South-African champs. Also found the Portuguese champ thanks to Troza. And Yu-Gi-Oh! Edition Singapore (fb) posted the link to the South-Korean decklist.
• Update 30/6: Added winners of Tokyo, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Box openings: A story of success and failure

Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy openings. You know you all love it (or hate it). So I wanted to try it as well and share in the happiness of pulling Books of Apocalypse or Drago-bastards.

So, via Novagames (a webshop from Northern-Ireland), I bought myself a few boxes. 2 for my friend Drago, 1 to open in front of the webcam I recently bought and 2 to open with friends.

Drago got 3 secrets out of his two boxes. He got cards like Fire Fist Cardinal, Torrential Reborn, Windrose, Harpie’s Channeler, Sacred Sword, Kerykeion, more than a playset of each Dragon Ruler, etc. While we said he pulled somewhat decently, he was kind of disappointed (total value of the pulled cards didn't add up to the cost).

Then, on Tuesday, I opened my box. Here’s the result. First time doing something like this, so I don’t know if it’s good quality (*looks somewhat unsure*).

And last, but not least, last Saturday I got together with two friends of mine, Chris and Carl.

Chris has the nickname “God-hand”, because he always seems to pull the good cards. If you want a Dragosack or Tour Guide out of your packs, it’s better to let him pick the packs. Carl is less lucky in pulling cards, but he’s the better duelist (he’s a regular topper in the Belgium National tournaments). Carl is the one that wanted to play Dragon Rulers. He already had his binder plundered to get that first Dragosack; and he was only able to get that second one thanks to Chris (the hand of god proved his name once more), whom he still owes (a lot).

So we opened the first box and each randomly picked a few packs from it (8 packs each). In total we pulled the amazing number of 6 supers (including Constellar Sombre, Sacred Sword and some Mecha Phantom Beasts), A Harpie’s Channeler, Scramble Scramble and Gwalchavad as Ultra/Ulti and a secret... Dragosack.

Guess who pulled it?

I ended up with the Dragosack (partial refund for the boxes, 20€ and the promise to give him the Number-cards I pull from “Number Hunters”) and promised Carl he could borrow my Dragosack during big tournaments.

The second box was less awesome. I was able to pull the secrets (two, once more) from the box, but accordingly to my luck with pack openings, I ended up with Windrose and (once more) Totem Bird. This is a sign, I tell you! Second Box also had a Kerykeion and Hootcake as noteworthy foils, but the total value of the second box just didn't compare to the awesome first one.

Afterword

So, this concludes my awesome failing of pulling good cards.

I’ll be testing variants of Dragon Rulers now. It will probably be a wind variant, due to the high number of Wind Dragons, Windroses and Totem Birds I have (I tell you; it’s a sign!). So either that, or a psychic version (earth/wind psychics with Risebell and Dragon Rulers).

This week, I’ll give you some do’s and don’ts on handling Dragon Rulers. Until then, V out.