The last ongoing debate that’s setting the stage for the weekend has been ongoing since Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy unleashed the Dragon Rulers.  Light and Darkness Dragon is easily one of the most debated cards in tournament play today: it’s pretty easy to Summon via the safe method of Special Summoning two Dragon Rulers as Tribute, or Special Summoning two Mecha Phantom Beast Tokens with Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack.  Searchable with Eclipse Wyvern, it’s never been more consistent, either.  Playing Light and Darkness Dragon (LADD) means accepting a certain degree of duplicity and risk: it’s amazing against certain cards and certain builds of popular strategies, but easily trumped by others.

On one hand, an early game LADD can demolish enough of your opponent’s cards that they just can’t recover.  By blocking the important early game moves in the Dragon Ruler mirror match or the Prophecy matchup, you can gain such an advantage that you just run roughshod over your opponent.  Even if your opponent’s willing to quickly burn enough cards to try and wear down LADD’s effect, Forbidden Chalice can reset it, letting you get extra negations from one copy of the Dragon.

But at the same time, Light and Darkness Dragon can become your undoing almost as easily.  Your opponent can play Forbidden Chalice on the Chain in response to LADD’s ability, forcing through their own effect and stripping LADD for the turn. Something as simple as a Chained Book of Moon can have the same effect, shutting off LADD’s negation tricks without destroying it.  And that’s where the real trouble begins – as soon as those negation effects are gone, LADD’s vulnerable to Number 11: Big Eye.  Turning your opponent’s LADD against them can easily win the game.

Adding to the complications, the sliding popularity of High Priestess of Prophecy has made it easier to run LADD by removing one of the biggest risk factors.  Since the Priestess’ Special Summon ability is a repeatable Ignition Effect, you can reveal three “Spellbook” Spells over and over to grind down its stats, then Summon Priestess and run LADD over with ease.  The popularity of High Priestess will play a large role in LADD’s viability this weekend: the more Priestesses we see, the harder it’ll be for Duelists who opted to run LADD.  But if No-Priestess variants continue to dominate, LADD becomes a better card – it’s also quite good against more aggressive Dragon Rulers.  If the Dragon Ruler decks played this weekend are more conservative and play to a slower pace, and if Evilswarms put in a big showing, LADD is tougher to run.

The status of Light and Darkness Dragon is just as ambiguous now as it has been since May.  Whether or not it’ll play a big role in this weekend’s main event is anybody’s guess, but its performance will serve as an indicator for several different factors this weekend.