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.

YCS Turin - Geargia Karuri wins the 125th YCS

Kinda overlooked this one (probably because I couldn't attend), but past weekend was the 125th YCS, YCS Turin (Italy).

Let's do a quick sum-up of the event:

• 1325 attendees, which all received the Artorigus playmat.
• 521 attendees played (some form of) Dragon Rulers, making it (obviously) the most popular deck of the moment.
• Second most popular deck was Evilswarm, once more confirming that Europeans in general like Dark decks.
• The standings at the end of Swiss. It's on this page.
• Several Americans attended the 125th YCS, including the winner (Sam Pedigo) and other famous (ARG) people like Patrick Hoban. Last mentioned one won the YCS trial, gaining a free trip to the next European YCS.
• All coverage articles can be read on The Coverage site of YCS Turin.

The top cut

The top 32 consisted of:

• 21x Dragon Ruler (all variants)
• 5x Evilswarm
• 2x Geargia
• 1x Fire Fist
• 1x Prophecy
• 1x Bujin

After that, it got cut further down as follows: Top 16 play-off chart.

An interesting side-note: I heard Michel Gruner got a game-loss due to slow play, which caused him losing the match versus Pedigo (who then ends up being the winner).

And the final was ... Samuel Pedigo (Geargia Karakuri) Vs Konrad Grunewald (Dragon Rulers). With Samuel becoming the winner!

Some deck profiles

I'll try to find some more deck profiles (let's see if Lithium uploads any). I'll post (and update) them here:

• Samuel Pedigo - Geargia Karakuri (Winner)
• Joshua Schmidt - Dragon Rulers (4th place) and Michel Gruner (top 8)
• Kevin Langenberg - Fire Fist (top 8)
• Aris Samaras - Evilswarm (Top 8)
• Matej Jakob - Geargia Karakuri (Top 16)
• Dustin Sembach - Bujin (Top 32)
• More will follow when I find them.

A side-note, the YCS Sydney Playmat

European YCS's always hold a surprise or two. This time, on Fridays, the announcement was that YCS Sydney would hand out a playmat to all attendees (to boost non-Australian players' motivation to attend). What mat could do that? A frigging Dark Magician Girl playmat! Check it out!

Is it just me or is this slightly less censored?
It looks amazing!

That's it for now. V out.

YCS Turin & First Oceanian YCS

Hey, it's been a while. You know, busy with work and had a concert with the brass band I play in (and help manage). Due to that, I'v been missing out on the sneaks.

But now that the concert is over, I got more time again for Yugiohs! There have been quite a few announcements in the past week. The most interesting ones were those about the first upcoming YCS's.

First Oceanian YCS is a fact: YCS Sydney

North America, Latin America and Europe have had their fair share of YCS's in the past few years, but people from down under have been requesting a YCS for years now. Up until now, that was always without avail.

But guess what? A few days ago, Mike Ting (Dueling Legacy) mentioned on his facebook page that Australia would get the first Oceanian YCS. And yesterday, that was confirmed by Konami on the following page: http://www.yugioh-card.com/uk/news/news_ycssydney.html.

This YCS will take place in Sydney, Australia on January 18 + 19. The event will take place in the ANZ Stadium.

YCS Sydney will become the first YCS of 2014 and will be (most probably) the first YCS that will follow the January 2014 Forbidden & limited list.

So if you ever thought about taking a trip down south, this might be the perfect opportunity. Also for many OCG players, this might be an opportunity to participate in a big TCG event, since Australia is closer by than most American events (let alone European events).

YCS Turin is 125th YCS and Konami celebrates it

The next YCS is the 125th YCS and this time, that will be YCS Turin (Italy) at the end of this month (November 30 + December 1).

For that reason, Konami announced yesterday that every attendant will receive a unique playmat for that YCS, with Noble Knight Artorigus. Also, the top-cut will not receive the Giant Hand playmat, but a unique Lady of the Lake playmat. And they're quite nice looking too.

"You have my sword!"

"It's dangerous to go into the top-32. Take this!"

More details on the event itself can be found on the following page: http://www.yugioh-card.com/uk/events/ycs_turin.html

Sadly enough, I won't be attending this one (ran out of days off :-P ), but I guess it just became worth it to attend, huh.

Until next time, V out.