Woke up this morning, with these updates on the Konami Products page:
If that ain't a good way to start a day, I don't know it :-P
Yeah, YCS Guatemala has been thé event of the past week-end, as YCS Sheffield has gone a little under the radar.
Not hard that it has been forgotten about, considering it was a Battle Pack main event.
But I have to admit, it has been quite successful (for a European YCS). This is the event in a few short bullets:
Bottom line of the main event is as covered by Peter Gross: "Good players are successful, and all people have fun".
The European Coverage was great, as always (honestly, the US coverage team could learn a few things from these guys)
Other fun fact: One of the Giant cards that could be won, was Poseidra, the Atlantean Dragon. So you could pick one up sooner than the upcoming structure deck in October (lol, if you don't mind over-sized cards).
Next European YCS is in December, in Barcelona... it's a normal one, don't worry.
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'.
The effect goes as follows:
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.
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.
Yesterday, I went to one of the locals I attend from time to time in Ghent. Second time I brought my Photon Lightray deck along to a local tourney, but I noticed this time around there was some decent competition (yes).
I was a little late and the judge tells me that (since I got a little late on the sneak too here) this is the last time he would let it slip through his fingers (sure, k, no problem.).
Another first-timer, but this one's better.
End result: 3 wins gives me the 4th place. 3 boosters of ROTD & the latest Turbo Pack as price. Though the only noteworthy card is... Rebound (why do I only draw crap from this set?).
The winner, Carl, gets 10 boosters and pulls 4 ultra/ulti cards (Puddingcess, Spellbook Magician, Spellbook of Secrets & SuperRoboGalaxyCrap). Why is he the only one that gets good stuff? :-(
On the other hand, the same day was able to get 10 ORCS boosters off a very cheap price (something close to 0). THose packs got me better results (Invoker, Super Transformation, Evolzar Solda, Dark Mist and a bunch of rares.
So, all in all a good day of testing. Now I at least have a few ideas to fill my side-deck with.
Until next time, V out.
For the fifth year in a row, the OCG will get a (Extra) booster pack, filled with all 42 TCG World premiere cards (you know, the TCG exclusives) we got in the past year. This Extra pack spreads from Extreme Victory to Order of Chaos (and a few extra's).
I guess it’s time to look back at what specific World premiere cards we had in the past year. I’m not going to cover all 42 cards, but I’ll take a selection of what I think made (or should’ve made) an impact on the game, in order of release.
The second TCG world premiere card that has been semi-limited months before it even hit Japanese shelves (just like Allure of Darkness in May 2008). We have to admit it, this card yells bad card design and was one of the reasons Pot of Avarice became limited in usage. Because, what’s worse than three Tengu’s? Six Tengu’s!
And with the weird (temporary) TCG rule that XYZ materials were considered leaving the field, this card's effect suddenly went apenuts!
A lot of TCG world premiere cards have a thing in common… them being overhyped. This is the first one of those. This card allowed disaster dragons to “dodge” counter traps for one turn and it made a significant impact on the game (NOT, lol). The September ’11 Forbidden & limited list made sure this card became utterly unused, because Heavy Storm returned and MST became unlimited! As people switched over from counter traps to “trigger” traps, Dodger Dragon couldn’t dodge anymore.
aka little girl, tour guide of the broken, too good from the underworld, Tour Slut,… no need to explain this card, as it’s been the most hyped TCG WP-card from the past year. Oh yeah… and it’s FROM the underworld, not OF the underworld. Please get it right for once. She’s so good she’s the third TCG world premiere card (after Tengu) to get some sort of limit.
But seriously... have you noticed the OCG name they're giving her?: "Death Guide Departing the Underworld Bound for the Living World". Jeezes, what a mouthful...
This was a welcomed card in Gladiator Beast Decks, though the only fault (according to the players) is the ability to tag out after a battle. GB-players use this card a lot and I’ve seen people use Rescue Rabbit to get 2 Anduril to tag into Essedarii.
This card actually revived the frog style decks and renamed it “Frog Lancer”. Sea Lancer equips itself with as many banished monsters (frogs) as possible and prevents its destruction by detaching 1 of those equipped monsters (re-activating their effects). Preferred targets are Poison Draw Frog (draw 1 card) and Dupe Frog (search 1 frog). During Irish Nationals, one guy introduced this deck in the world and hogged all the attention (by getting into top-8).
This is the card that failed to revive the Zombies, even though it was a nice try. This is a tuner that allows for easy synchro summoning of hard to achieve Zombie synchro monsters. This was something zombies needed ever since Plaguespreader Zombie got hit by the F&L list in March 2009.
This card is a good anti-synchro card. It would be a nice level 6 synchro that replaces Iron Chain Dragon. But it came out a little too late to make an actual impact on the game. Though if people were to switch over to synchro’s again in the new format, this might be a good replacement for Brionac.
This is one of the better rank 5 XYZ out there, without being broken. This has been a nice addition to the extra deck for a while now.
2000 attack for a lv. 3 monster, but under such restrictions that it’s not broken. Can be searched through SNM Hamster, is handy with skill drain, can search another Sabre Tiger, but is not always going to save your day if you topdeck it. This is what I call, a good, balanced card.
These are the two TCG world premiere Wind-up effect monsters. Shark can be special summoned and changes its own level; rabbit can basically hop over everything thrown at him. These two cards are great additions to every Wind-up Deck out there.
This is Herald of Orange Light in XYZ form. It negates monster effects and destroys them. This card is the reason why Dino Rabbit is more popular over here than in OCG and it is one of the reasons why Dino Rabbit is the top deck of this format in TCG.
This card achieved a change in OCG-Konami’s point of view on TCG world premiere cards. Before Zenmaines every TCG world premiere card was collected and released once per year in an Extra Pack. But Zenmaines got released ahead of that time, in the OCG Gold Series of begin 2012. It’s not weird, as it is a very powerful card and it made the gold series sell really well in OCG.
Inzektor players love this card. It triggers the effect of Centipede and Dragonfly. And unlike Ladybug, this is not a bad top deck, as its attack is 1700 (probably the only lv. 4 or lower beat stick the inzektors have). There is that tiny bit of the text that allows another Inzektor to attack directly, even if it’s the first turn. But I guess we’ll see the revised card text in the Extra Pack, huh (just like they revised the text on Darksoul).
Ninja support is cool. This backrow protector is a nice addition to ninja decks. The fact that she’s a dragon instead of a warrior, allows her to be special summoned by Ninjitsu Art of Super Transformation. But ninja’s need a little more support to be competitive.
This is a personal favorite and that’s not because of its ridiculous name (twist your tong, say its name 5 times out loud and fast). I like him because of the fact that he can be summoned when a monster you control is destroyed. This allows for field presence and is handy in control decks. This card was somewhat ignored in the Inzektor-heavy format, but is a card to think about in the September 2012 format.
Overhyped TCG cards? This card definitely takes the cake. When announced, people thought that it could combo really well with Tour guide (it does) and its effect would be even more broken than Tour Guide (nope), which put its pre-order price at somewhere between 60 & 70$ (sucks to be you if you bought it at this price). Tour Bus is a card whose effect allows for graveyard control (either your own or your opponents). Price dropped fast, because this card is a bad top deck and not everybody likes graveyard control. Originally, it dropped to about 10$, but I notice the price has been going up again ever since the semi-limit of Tour Guide.
Next to the 10 TCG world premiere cards per booster set, this time we got 2 extra WP-cards, Shadow of the Six Samurai – Shien (from the Six Sam Structure Deck) and this one. That’s the first time this happened ever.
About the seal: A few weeks after we get the infamous seal of Orichalcos, the OCG gets it as well. Nothing much to say about this card, as the (probably nerfed) effect is still unknown.
So, that’s my review of Extra pack 5. The cards not mentioned are just average (not bad, yet not great either), or simply not worth mentioning.
Until next time, V out.
For the past few weeks, I've been testing a lot (like I said two weeks ago). Since my agenda's pretty full, that means an average of 2-3 matches per day, so it takes a little longer than originally intended.
From this week onward, I'll give you the test results and deck lists. First up is one of my favorites: Photon Lightray.
After the release of the Photon Trio (Lizard/Thrasher/Crusher) in ORCS and the introduction of the Lightrays in GAOV, I noticed that both archetypes mixed very well together. I found out I was not the only one with that idea, as shortly afterwards, OCG legend Rauzes came up with a build (His decklist can be found on Dueling Legacy), which gave me a few ideas as well (like using Guardian of Order).
Since first tests went bad while facing Inzektors, this deck was put on hold. But with Inzektors getting banhammered, I picked it up again, re-molded it and gave it this result.
The deck tested really well on DN and the few tests I did in real life were good (though only locals with not that great competition). I'm testing this deck further.
Next time, more test results - the ninja deck.
Until then, V out.
Short update. I've been following the news flashes of YCS Toronto. Normally I ignore them and read all posts the day afterwards. But there was one deck that caught my eye and kept me following all the updates.
The deck that caught my eye is Psychic Grandsoil (Psoil in Short) and the Deck Creator is Jeff Jones. The decklist can be found over here.
Yeah, he posted it himself. No need to wait a week for Konami to get a decklist up.
Jeff made top 32, top 16 and made it all the way up into the finals. That fact alone got me excited. Psychics topping? WOW!
Sadly enough he lost to Wind-ups in an (apparantly) exciting finale versus Joshua Graham.
We knew that Wind-ups would take the crown, as everybody has been talking about possible Wind-up OTK's, but the psoil deck is a dark horse for the next YCS's. And let's just say... I'm a fan of it already.
Until next time, V out.
Edit: Team Overload posted the decklists of all top 4 on their blog. Check it over here.
