27 January 2014

Reasons to love or hate Legacy of the Valiant

Back on demand, here's another edition of "Reasons to love or hate the latest set". In this edition: Legacy of the valiant.

Hits, or reasons to love Legacy

  • Best Sneak Peek promo in a long time (if you like Sylvans): People who play the Sylvan deck all agree, Bladefender is a good card. 1900 beat stick that forces itself to your hand when "excavated".
  • Less (crappy) anime cards: This is the OCG November set that appeared shortly after the Duelist Packs came out in Japan. The positive thing about this is that this means there are less (crappy) anime cards in here (hurrah!). And you have to admit, some of these cards are actually quite good (Rainbow Kuriboh, Moai carrier, the Gorgons, S.H.ARK).
  • There are some cards in here that everybody wants: While the last few sets were kind of "meh", this set has people back on the ropes. Cards like S.H.ARK and Exciton Knight is triggering everybody's funny bone. Moneygrabber of the moment is Evilswarm Exciton Knight who's already a whopping €80$ and doesn't show any immediate signs of dropping in price.
  • The TCG Exclusives are GOOD: It only happens once in a blue moon, but more than half of the TCG exclusives in this set are good cards.
  • A decent Lv. 4 ritual monster: Paladin of Photon Dragon is a card that makes people like me look back at Advanced Ritual Art and Preparation of Rites.
  • Old archetype that gets support: Gravekeeper's. Aah, an old fan-favorite archetype gets some support. Though a lot of people hate Gravekeeper's due to their past Royal Tribute shenanigans, but the limit of that card last September should help people get over those bad memories.
  • Last "old" effect monsters finally printed: It took them well over a decade, but the last of the old "unnumbered" effect monsters are finally printed. Dark Artist and Swordsman of a Distant land can finally be scratched of the hated list of OCG cards we've never seen up 'till today. Not that many people care, their effects suck.
  • Deluxe Edition: While no details are given as of yet what promo cards will be included, the Special Editions are gone (as Konami said last year). From now on, more Deluxe boxes with arts of popular themes. This time: Evilswarm and Gravekeeper's. And if they haven't decided yet (which I doubt) on what commons/rares to print as foil? here's a suggestion: Ghostrick Jackfrost and Dullahan would look amazing in a shiny foil!

Misses, or reasons to hate Legacy

  • Ghost Mobius the Mega Monarch: With the last few sets, Konami wizened up to turn the most popular card both as an Ultimate Rare, Secret Rare AND Ghost rare. Star Eater got that treatment; Felgrand got that treatment... But WHY Mobius? Why not Evilswarm Exciton Knight? That would've looked AMAZING as a ghost rare!
  • Gravekeeper's are no longer a budget deck: Good luck finding your Shaman and Secret Tombs at "budget" value (hint: you won't).
  • Some Secrets are not justified: Rainbow Kuriboh is like Mystic piper all over again. Who is going to use that card? (*cough*me*cough*)
  • Another case of "bad" card effects: I told it in the "Cards to look forward to" post. Evilswarm Exciton Knight is once more a card with horribly bad effect writing. The card reads as abuse and promotes bad play. This card isn't going to be legal for a long time and you know it!
  • 5 OCG world Premiere cards you won't be seeing for a frigging year!: I'm still mad about it and Konami is going to DO IT AGAIN with the next set, because the OCG world Premiere cards were "so well received". No duh! 5 cards that made 2 archetypes competitive all of a sudden? Who wouldn't receive those cards well? Oh, and Primal Origin will have TEN of those cards. This can only be forgiven if we're given some sort of "Extra Pack" before the world Championship!
  • Silly new game terms don't do anything, safe confusing the players: Ever since the Problem-Solving Card texts were introduced, Konami tries to make game terms like piercing a thing, thus trying to shorten card text. Sometimes this is with success. But in this case, it's a total failure.This set introduced the new term "excavate". The full explanation of this term is: "Reveal x cards from your deck". That's confusing for newer players and doesn't really shorten the total sentence. I mean compare: "You can reveal the top card from your deck" to "You can excavate the top card from your deck"". In fact, there's a higher amount of used characters in the card text. Fail?

My thoughts in general

Due to circumstances, I've obtained all necessary cards last weekend to upgrade my old Gravekeeper deck to the new meta (okay, okay, I was gloating with my 3 Imperial Tombs). So I'll probably play Gravekeepers as a change to my Prophecy deck (which is still a good deck).

I've also been able to pull both S.H.ARK and Exciton Knight (lol, this set clearly loves me) and playtested them in my Chaos Dragon deck yesterday, during a regional qualifier. The end result of the day was: Exciton Knight is kind of situational and "meh" (so not worth its pricetag); S.H.Ark is frigging awesome and worth EVERY PENNY.

And the more I'm confronted with Ghostricks, the more I seem to love these new cards.

For the rest, this set has some for all people who play the different archetypes (Bujin, Noble Knights, Ghostrick, Gravekeeper, Sylvan, Duston). But for even more diversity, I'll be waiting for Primal Origins, the last booster of this generation of YGO.


If you summoned a badass monster, I feel bad for you, son.
I got 99 problems, but your boss monster ain't one!

20 January 2014

DSummon wins YCS Sydney + decklists

For those that haven't heard yet, YCS Sydney happened last weekend, with well over 750 people attending (821 as pointed out in the comments :-P ). It was the first Oceanean YCS and thus an amount of attendees to be proud of.

An obvious way to lure in people was the Dark Magician Girl playmat. And ironically, Konami didn't have enough of the lure-mats. Can't blame them though, as the highest amount of attendees at an Aussie event was 300 up until now and having to destroy hundreds of leftover DMG playmats would be such a waste. But back on case; the overseas attendees all got a mat and the locals got a sort of voucher, so that they could pick up the mats when they were reprinted.

Konami did coverage and so did DSummon (of Duelingdays blog & Yugioh Edition Singapore Facebook page). DSummmon was attending his first YCS (as an OCG player) and... he ended up winning it all (lol). And how else could the Machine Master win a YCS than with a Machine deck... Karakuri's.

Hence, all information from the tournament I'm providing (that ANYBODY is providing, safe Konami), all comes from DSummon (and his buddy Jeff probably too). Therefore, if you want the full "mass" of information he provided, check the YCS Sydney event page, Yugioh Edition Singapore (YES) and High Level Gaming (HLG) facebook groups.

Also, there's Konami's coverage blog, but due to technical problems and an undermanned blogging staff the amount of articles was a little less than usual (also published half a day after the event). Still, you can read it over here.

Decklists

If you want to see pictures and whatnot, click the previous links. But since Facebook can make it look very disorganized, I'll list the decklists for you in a nice table. All credits for it go to DSummon.

Name Place/Top Deck Played Decklist
Anders Koh (DSummon) 1st Place Karakuri Available on YES
Christopher Welsh 2nd Place Fire Fist Available on HLG
Jono Ritzau 3rd Place Fire Fist Available on HLG
Adrian Cilmi 4th place Prophecies Available on HLG and ARG
Liam Fardell Top 8 Geargia Karakuri N.A.
Gareth Murphy Top 8 Prophecies Available on HLG and ARG
Hamish Poole Top 8 Fire Fists Available on HLG
Joshua Duce Top 16 Prophecies Available on HLG
Leonard Dunne Top 16 Anti-meta Fire Fist Available on HLG
Christopher Giang Top 16 Harpie Lady Available on HLG
Tom Labonne Top 16 Mermail Available on HLG
Ryan Nelson Top 16 Fire Fists Part 1 and part 2 on HLG
Dennis Nguyen Top 16 Fire Fists Available on youtube - Team Flelf
Jan Sing Top 16 Mermail Available on HLG
Timothy Chiew Top 32 Fire Fist Available on HLG
Dominic Italiano Top 32 Geargia Karakuri Available on youtube - Team Flyfang
Tom Kralj Top 32 Hunder Family Available on HLG
Nathan Kosc Top 32 Mermail Available on HLG
Jimmy Lam Top 32 Fire Fists Available on HLG
James Moore Top 32 Inzektor Available on HLG
Ben Newland Top 32 Fire Fist Available on HLG
Christopher Short Top 32 Fire Fists Available on HLG
Chester Sword Top 32 Fire Fists Available on HLG

Update: Got 22/32 decklists.

More will be added if I notice them ;-) .

Meanwhile in the US... Fire Fists conquers ARG Open Nashville

On the other side of the ocean, we had another ARG Open, the first of this new format. In that tournament, Dalton Bousman won with his Fire Fist deck, with Carl Manigat in second place with Prophecies.

For the top 16 decklists, check their coverage.

Noteworthy here, is 4 people topped with yet another new variant of DRulers, Hieratic DRuler (sigh).

Afterword

I knew that Australians were big Fire Bros, but the amount of topping Fire Bros topping is just ridiculous. And while I feel this is a single-sided opinion (since not all topped decks have been published online yet), I feel that the remaining decklist slots will be mostly Fire bros as well (I so hope I'm wrong, though).

On a side-note, the two missing top-8 decks are (from what I heard) a Karakuri deck and another Fire Fist deck.

First Upcoming big events

  • February 01 + 02: YCS Atlanta, GA (US)
  • February 08 + 09: ARG Circuit - Charlotte, NC (US)
  • February 22 + 23: YCS Berlin (Germany)
  • March 08 + 09: YCS Sao Polo (Brazil)
  • April 05 + 06: YCS Mexico D.F. (Mexico)
  • April 12 + 13: YCS Las Vegas, NV (US)

YCS Atlanta will be the first big event with Legacy legal; and the Cyber Dragon SD will be either played first in the ARG Charlotte, or YCS Berlin (depending on whether or not they're allowing it in its "opening weekend".

Note: I'm not updating further than April, because ARG will probably update their calendar as well and there might be another European YCS before the Nationals season starts.

That's it for now, V out.

15 January 2014

Dark Renewal Gets a friggin' print!

*que fan-boy freakout*

Ahem, sorry about that. Well, err. Been a while, eh? been busy with work projects that require my attention, also evening classes Japanese (had an exam yesterday) and (let's be honest) a new 3ds with wonderful games (fire emblem, ace attorney and now pokémon) took my time away from blogging. Also, there was hardly any noteworthy news in the past month, save the past week.

But more on that news in a later post. What you came for is the OCG set "Memories of the Duel King" (aka Yugi's deck).

Memories of the Duel King

For those that don't know, this set will be the 15th anniversary set (similar to the 10th anniversary set that included cards with artworks by Kazuki Takahashi himself).

This (currently only) OCG set will have 41 cards, including a foil reprint of the original Dark Magician and DM girl. Also, a pack of sleeves, a storage case, a 15th anniversary token, an (unknown) promo card.

But this set will also include 3 "new" cards from the first anime series:

  • Bond Between Teacher and Student
  • Dark Renewal
  • Electromagnetic Turtle

The card arts as shown in the Tag Force games.

What the cards did in the anime

Bond between Teacher and Student allows you to summon a DMG from anywhere if you control a Dark Magician. Don't think they're going to nerf this one; it's not an overpowered effect.

Electromagnetic Turtle allows you to end the opponent's battle phase (anytime) during a turn when this card is sent to the graveyard (no matter how). This will probably be altered to "end battle phase when destroyed and sent to the graveyard" or so to make it less OP.

Dark Renewal: "Activate only when your opponent Summons a monster(s) or when an opponent's monster declares an attack. Send 1 monster your opponent Summoned this turn and 1 monster you control to the Graveyard, and Special Summon 1 Spellcaster-Type monster from your Graveyard."

As a spellcaster fan, I'm frigging happy that Dark Renewal will (FINALLY) get a print. let's hope they just don't nerf its effect too hard (*crosses fingers*).

In other news

the OCG banlist is revealed in the latest VJump. For us TCG players it don't matter much anymore, but it's always nice to compare. I'll probably make an analysis/comparison of it in the upcoming days or so. The most interesting thing there is the return of CYBER-STEIN!

Most content of Legacy of the Valiant is leaked by now. Safe 2 Super Rares we know all foils. I'll post more on that later on.

More sneak peeks from Primal Origin is getting released in the latest VJump, together with some more promo reveals. I'll also post more on that when we get clear detailed info on it.


Pays 5000 LP, gets F-chained, cries a lot

Yeah, after a month of a near-constant silence, the Yugi-news is back in full force!

Until next time, V out.

Note: Source: DSummon's "Yugioh Edition Singapore" facebook page.