Welcome To The New Era Of Dueling!
Welcome to the first Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series tournament of an all-new era!
Eleven days ago on August 20th Duelists world-wide were shocked to find that the new Forbidden & Limited List would bring sweeping changes to the Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME. Dragon Rulers and Prophecy were reined in, along with their predecessors, Mermails and Fire Fists. Splashable trap cards were Limited and Semi-Limited to balance out the newly-Forbidden status of Heavy Storm. Generic power cards like Monster Reborn and Pot of Avarice were banished to the Shadow Realm, as were high-impact themed cards like Gateway of the Six. Cards like Black Whirlwind, Destiny Hero – Malicious, and Scapegoat were removed from the List, returning to three-per-deck. It was the biggest list of changes ever, affecting a grand total of 47 cards.
Suddenly the field was wide open: while the four top decks of the year were still playable, Duelists began exploring new strategies like Bujin, and started revisiting revamped decks like Zombies, Blackwings, Infernities, Agents, and countless others. Nordics? Watts? It’s all here. Heated debates have raged for a week and a half about the impact of Heavy Storm’s Forbidden status: some plan to run more Trap Cards now that they don’t have to worry about Heavy, while others plan to ride the razor’s edge, eschewing traps to render opposing Mystical Space Typhoons useless.
Walking the tournament floor this morning it looks like there are dozens of decks that we’ll see in contention. The only thing most Duelists agree on is that there is no “best deck” so far – no obvious choice that crushes everything else. Even friends and teammates are playing different strategies. Expect coverage today to be all over the place, as we bring you a wide spread of deck profiles and feature. 756 of North America’s greatest Duelist have traveled here to kick off the new format in high style; this could prove to be an all-time classic.
Welcome to what may go down as one of the greatest weekends in Yu-Gi-Oh! history. A tournament of firsts and a tournament for the ages, welcome, to YCS Toronto!
