The Proto-YCS tournaments at the 300^th YCS events have concluded, and the numbers are in! Again, a huge thank you to everyone who chose to play in the Proto-YCSes in both Richmond and Dortmund. Coming up next is the Genesys celebration at Official Tournament Stores over the entire month of March, and we’ve also had the release of Maze of Muertos. That means it’s time to update the points once again!

The last major points update based on tournament data was back in December, but between the Proto-YCS events and the uptick on players posting their Decks online using #YGOGenesys, we have a nice chunk of data to work with to update the points. You should see that update on Thursday or Friday but we can tell you what to expect now, while we iron out the final numbers.

New Cards from Maze of Muertos
There aren’t many of these that will be getting points. The most important is The Gaze of Timaeus since it makes Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon’s 100 point cost almost irrelevant.

Side note: we discussed Maze of Muertos with Duelists at the events, and whether or not the Pumpking cards really need a huge number of points tossed on them pre-emptively. We were able to sus out that players don’t actually believe every new theme that releases is so powerful it needs to immediately have 60 or so points slapped on its engine.

Usage Rate Outliers (Decks)
This category covers cards used in Decks that were significant performance outliers. As a reminder of a few basic facts: Every tournament will have exactly 1 winner. Every tournament has a most popular Deck. Just being the most popular Deck doesn’t mean the points are going to go sky high, but if the margin between the most popular Deck and the rest of the pack is massive, the point increases will be larger.

Across the Proto-YCS events, Kewl Tune was by far the most played Deck, with 53 Duelists, not counting the White Forest Decks that used some Kewl Tune cards as an additional engine. That’s twice as many Decks as Exosisters (27), which was the second most played Deck. Following Exosisters were Monarchs (22), White Forest (19), Dracotail (18), Vanquish Soul (17), Radiant Typhoon (16), and Artmage (15).

Despite winning the Dortmund event, Kewl Tune’s overall win rate hovered around 50% for the weekend. Many players commented that once they sat down for real YCS level competition, they found that some of their card choices built up around casual Duels weren’t correct for a 7+ round Swiss tournament against exclusively strong Decks.

Many players regretted choosing Exosisters, and the data bears that out. No Top 8 finishes, 2 total Top 32 finishes between both events, and an overall win rate closer to 40% than 50%. Due to the play rate, they’ve earned some more points, but due to the lack of success, the increases will be far smaller than they would be for even a 50% win rate Deck.

Usage Rate Outliers (Engines)
The prophecy has finally come true, Radiant Typhoon Vision finally showed up as a popular draw engine in non-Radiant Typhoon Decks. How popular was it? More than 3 times as popular as the Radiant Typhoon Deck itself. This is a big change from the Invitational stage of the rollout where it was almost exclusively in Radiant Typhoon Decks.

The Regenesis cards have spread outside of just Regenesis and Vanquish Soul, and at the same time, the actual Regenesis Deck players have also been asking for a re-balance of their points, like we did for Adventurer and Branded.

Also in this category will be some changes to P.U.N.K. as well as Medeus the Pure and Theorealize, which now appear as engines across 3 different Decks.

Usage Rate Outliers (Non-Engine)
This is where Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit and friends will appear. Kewl Tune is really messing with the numbers in this category, since as a Synchro Deck it’s very Tuner-heavy, and the ghost girls are all Tuners, so this gets tricky. But a card like Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring is definitely creeping up in usage so it’s going to go up in cost (it’s still showing up in less than a quarter of North American Decks, by the way, and even fewer in Europe). At the same time, Droll & Lock Bird has dropped in use (no surprise…) so will decrease a little bit, but not down to where it was before.

The “Standard” Side Deck
Over 60% of all competitors’ Side Decks started with 3 D.D. Crow, 3 Cosmic Cyclone, and 3 Ultimate Slayer. Most Extra Decks began with Garura, Wings of Resonant Life, Golden Cloud Beast – Malong, and Mereologic Aggregator. More than half of Duelists also played 3 Dark Ruler No More. These and similar cards will no longer be free and will cost points, simply because of the basic Genesys rule (heavily-played cards go up, less-played cards go down).

Low Usage Decks Players Like
We’ll be taking another pass over the points list looking for Decks players seem to like but feel the points are a bit too heavy on. The poster Deck here is, shockingly, Dragon Rulers. We’ve imagined what it’d be like to travel back in time a decade and tell our younger selves how much players want fewer restrictions on the Dragon Rulers. Would have laughed ourselves out of the room and yet here we are!

Low Usage Engine/Non-Engine
There are several cards undergoing point decay right now due to rarely (or never) appearing in Decks.

FTKs and Pseudo-FTKs
Since we want to keep these out of Genesys, some miscellaneous cards, mostly draw spells, will be getting points tacked on. A few people tried some FTKs at these events. They didn’t do so hot, but it’s the only way to be sure.

After we make this update, we’re going to leave things alone through the end of the Genesys Celebration events. There will be another update for the launch of Blazing Dominion on its Premiere Event weekend just like we did for Burst Protocol. If something pressing comes up during the next month and a half, we’ll address it so players can get ready for YCS Columbus on May 23^rd! Just keep on posting those Deck Lists using #YGOGenesys.

Road Map Q&A
After we posted the Genesys Road Map (which you really should read, if you have not), we noticed some common questions pop up, so we wanted to address them here.

Q: For “Big Top” events (where Genesys & Advanced Format Main Events both happen) will Day 1 of one Main Event be Friday, and Day 1 of the other Main Event be Saturday, so I can shoot for Day 2 of each event by playing in Day 1 of both?
A: For WCQ and YCS, yes, but not until after YCS Columbus. For North America, starting with the Genesys tournament coming to the North America WCQ in July, and then for YCS main events after that, the Genesys YCS Day 1 will be on Friday, and the Advanced Format YCS Day 1 will be on Saturday. So you can compete in the Day 1 of both Genesys and Advanced Format, for two shots at Day 2. (Repeat: This starts in July, so NOT at YCS Columbus.) For Latin America, the same will be true, but beginning in October 2026.

Q: I was hoping Genesys would be a lower-power format, can that be fixed?
A: This can already be done! One of the beautiful things about Genesys is that the tournament organizer can adjust the point cap. Setting the point cap to 50 or 25 (just as examples) cuts the power level of the tournament’s Decks considerably. A 10-point cap limits the use of point-costed cards to only the smallest point costs, and only a handful of those. A zero-point cap cuts them out entirely. Ask your tournament organizer to try different point caps if that’s what you’re looking for. (Just let everyone know in advance so they can prepare their Decks!)

Q: What data do you use for point adjustments?
A: Tournament data is first and foremost, so we’ve been relying on the Invitationals (and soon the YCS). We also look at Decks shared with the #YGOGenesys tag. But the big news recently was the addition of Genesys to NEURON. When more local Official Tournament Stores get patched in to submitting Deck results via NEURON, we’ll finally have the continuous stream of data that we’ve been waiting for, all along. We’ve been building Genesys brick by brick during this early access period, and it’s been coming together very nicely. Thank you, everyone, for your enthusiasm and patience!