Tick tock...

Until half of February, when the next forbidden and limited list will appear in V-Jump (presumably end of next week), the Yugi-news has been kind of slow.

I've been looking around for a few news facts and came up with the following:

Kevin Tewart Reveals what we should expect from the star Pack

In a post on pojo, Tewart revealed that NOTHING in the Star pack would influence the secondary market in the US and is mostly aimed at non-US territories (hence the old/false rumor it was going to be a Europe-only release). He also said that the pack will not be available in big amounts in the US, because all the cards are "easily" available.

Basically that means that the star pack will mostly focus on the reprints of Jump cards. So all those cards in my previous post that could make the pack a bit interesting? Forget about those, they're probably not going to be in there :-(

Content Onslaught of the Fire Kings Revealed

In Europe, the first Fire Kings Structure Deck have been received, together with the decklist. Changes are:

• We do NOT get Jurrac Velo & Jurrac Guaiba.
• We do not get Chain Destruction.
• We get Neo Flamvell Sabre (eeeew), Royal Firestorm Guards (actually works with the deck) and Call of the Haunted (not bad) instead.

I know many fans will be pissed about the face Guaiba isn't in the Structure Deck. But (as Tewart confirmed on Pojo) that's mostly because Guaiba doesn't really work with the other cards in the structure deck.

Zexal tin reveals its cover monsters. Is it real?

God, let's hope it's not real. let's hope it's just a well-made Photoshop. Because of this picture. Giga Brilliant might be nice, but eeeeew, gagaga magician? And Ultra Gagagabolt? That HAS to be fake, right? Right? (*looks uncertain*).

Konami is SLOW with their updates

If you follow the product page of Yugioh, you might have noticed that in the last few months, they're slow in their updates. The so-called "update" of Cosmo Blazer only appeared on the day of the first Sneak peeks (was supposed to be shortly after new Year), and the structure deck page has only been updated this week (also a little late). This has been going on for a while now and has gone so far that in a few cases the European page has become faster than the US version (and that is saying A LOT).

While I was skimming through Pojo on some interesting news, I noticed a post of Tewart that he realizes they're behind schedule on product information and they're "working to fix that".

Let's hope so, because we still have nothing for the Star Pack, the Zexal Tin, the Special Edition of CBLZ, Hidden Arsenal 7 nor the upcoming Starter Deck.

Franken becomes Zombiestein

Kinda missed this one during all the news updates last week. The English name for No. 22: Franken has been revealed. It's now oficially: Number 22: Zombiestein. Release of this card is in Zexal Manga Volume 3, in sale June 4th.

Wind elemental Lord

Its name is Windrose, the Elemental Lord. Has been thoroughly discussed on other blogs and youtube. It's basically Harpie's Feather Duster in Monster Form and it's a Winged Beast.

And that's about itt. All in all, no big revelations in the past few weeks.

One final note. I notice that High Priestess' price is going higher and higher, ever since the revelation of Final Judgment of Prophecy. Europ sites still state prices of 65€ onward, but tcgplayer stores go close to 100$. Interesting trend, to say the least.

Until next time, V out.

TCG-Konami & Duelist Packs

You might have noticed it's been a while since the TCG got their last Duelist pack. The last one that was released over here was Duelist pack: Crow and was quite a success, due to easy-to-get Blackwing monsters & Zephyros the Elite being one of the most splashable Blackwings ever.

But Kevin Tewart (the most known honcho of Konami) never made a secret of it that TCG-Konami does not like Duelist packs. The appearance of the Duelist pack Yuma last year made his point completely.

This 30-card set was something that the TCG didn't want. Out of the 30-card set, Volcasaurus was the only new decent card. Any Marketing student (with a specialization in card games) could see that this Duelist Pack would remain in store shelves for years to come.

So, until further notice, Konami will never again release a Duelist Pack.

"Come on, you do WANT one of my "amazing" cards
to make a Yuma deck, don't you?
Trust me, it's competitive!"

What about the new cards?

But stopping the line of Duelist Packs brought a new problem along with it. In each Duelist pack, there are a few new cards. Duelist Pack Yuma had 5 new cards. This year's Duelist Pack Kite/Kaito had an incredible amount of 12 new cards (lol, as if OCG-Konami was laughing in the face of its TCG-counterpart). But those cards need to get a TCG print sometime.

Kevin Tewart once said on Pojo that they were brainstorming a lot about a decent way to release this.

And then finally last week, after a long period of silence, the 808blog posted an announcement that 2013 would see the release of a new Premium Tin (the Zexal Collection Tin), which includes these cards.

The Zexal Collection Tin

In short, each tin will have 3 fixed Ulimate Rares (reprints), 4 random new Ultra Rare cards and 7 random new Super Rare cards. That's a total of 14 cards in each tin.

Also, the random cards will come from a card pool of 21 (new) cards, including the cards from the Duelist Packs.

So WHAT is in it?

The reprints? There's a great chance that these will be reprints of Jump cards (so non-US players can play them), like 7-Swords Warrior, Barbaroid, E-Hero Escuridao, Catapult Warrior or Shooting Quasar Dragon. Though I wonder which ones they'll pick, since all of the cards I just mentioned are NOT Zexal-related (lol).

And the new cards? Well, the tin art revealed cards like Volcasaurus and Photoknight Paladios, so I bet your ass most of the new cards from the previous mentioned Duelist Packs will be in here.

I so feel like a TV-shop salesman right now... <_<

But if you can count and you read all of the previous sections, you'll notice that the numbers don't match. 5 new cards from the Yuma Duelist Pack, 12 new cards from the Kite Duelist pack... that doesn't match the 21 new cards in total!

So, I guess there's still some speculation on what OTHER cards will be in here? Will there be cards from the upcoming OCG-premium pack (which includes Zubaba General)? Or will it be random OCG promo cards (like Number 56: Goldrat)?

Anyway, I'm looking froward to this release, since my main deck right now is a Photon deck and cards like Volcasaurus & Paladios are good XYZ monsters in general.

That's it for now.

Until next time, V out.

The Seal of Orichalcos - The Full effect

If you're following the Konamy Strategy blog, you might have picked up a few lines of the effect of the Seal of Orichalcos. for those that didn't, check this blog out.

Thanks to a few people online (both on TCGPlayer & Pojo), the effect has been fully 'revealed'.

Now there IS an effect!

The effect

The effect goes as follows:

• All monsters you control gain 500 ATK.
• Once per turn, this card cannot be destroyed by card effects.
• While you control 2 or more face-up attack position monsters, your opponent cannot target your monster(s) with the lowest ATK for an attack.
• When this card is activated: destroy all Special Summoned monsters you control.
• You cannot Special Summon monsters from your Extra Deck.
• You can only activate "The Seal of Orichalcos" once per duel.

Good or bad?

Well, Konami made sure this card wouldn't make all other field spells useless and wouldn't be abused as hell. But in return, this card has become useless in most decks that are used nowadays. Destroying special summoned monsters? Not being able to summon from the extra deck? Those are huge draw-backs for most decks nowadays.

But there are a few decks that might profit from this card.

• Frog Monarchs: What's more dangerous than 2400 attack monarchs? 2900 attack monarchs! Monarchs's only special summon treeborn Frog. And even if the frog is blocked by this spell, the fact that your opponent cannot attack monsters with lower attack is a good blocker and helps build up your defenses/tributes.
• Malefic Style decks. Malefics remove cards from the extra deck, but don't special summon them. And they require a field spell to stay alive. Having a field spell that cannot be destroyed (once per turn) is a powerful asset. Having lower attack monsters that cannot attack, yet cannot be attacked are great assets as well.
• Eartbound Immortals: You remember those big level 10 monsters from the 5D's era? Powerful cards, but with a big drawback as they required two tributes and needed a field spell to stay alive. With this card, they might make a come-back (though they might require a little more than just this card).

I'm sure more original decks will pop up in the future that might find a use for this card, but for now that's all I could think of.

Well, I'll try to post up some more test results near the end of the week. Until then, V out.

The Cadillac of Demons

A few days ago, I was following a conversation on Pojo about the Battle Pack. This conversation included the infamous Konami honcho, Kevin Tewart. Suddenly, a conversation about the Battle Pack got a side-walk after a question about Mazera DeVille.

Kevin mentioned that he found it sad (for the creator) that nobody got the original joke about Mazera’s TCG name. And thus he hinted the card name’s origin (and Wikipedia did the rest, lol).

This old card, from Ancient Sanctuary, got translated from Devil Mazera into Mazera DeVille, the closest thing a TCG monster ever got to the name devil.

Why, yes. I AM a devil, not a Djinn!

But why “DeVille”? There was a joke bound to the card name, of course, but not the one the fans thought of. Everybody thought Mazera’s name was based upon Cruella de Vil, but that’s not it.

Of course not, I am so NOT a devil!

Mazera’s literally the Cadillac of demons, as his TCG name is based upon the Cadillac De Ville. Hardly anyone realized it. But I guess that’s what you get when you try a car joke amongst a young public that rather watches cartoons instead of expensive cars.