We’re about to kick off another day of Dueling here in Las Vegas, with the Ultimate Duelist Series Invitational – Winter 2017! Our Duelists have been reduced to only the top 64, to play another four rounds of Swiss before moving on to the Top 16 cut.

Since this event is invite-only, the attendance isn’t huge like a Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series, but the event is stacked with amazing players. We’ve got two previous Ultimate Duelists, Aaron Furman and Ryan Murakami. Thomas Mak, Stephen Silverman, and Admassu Williams-Ademe are both World Championship attendees. There are also YCS Champions Frazier Smith, Jessy Samek, Angel Ascencio, Denny Yu and many Duelists with YCS Top Cut appearances. There’s an incredible caliber of Duelist here, just as strong as an average YCS. That’s bound to happen when you’ve got to earn your entry to the tournament.

It’s been interesting seeing the development of Zoodiac strategies over the last few weeks. They debuted in YCS Seattle, and were evenly split between pure and Kaiju versions of the Deck. Two weeks later, Fusion Enforcers was released and YCS Atlanta happened. There we started to see more pure versions of the Deck, but also a ton of Kaiju and some Invoked versions of the Deck. Two more weeks, and we’re here in Las Vegas for the Ultimate Duelist Series Invitational, and it’s almost entirely pure Zoodiac Decks. It seems Duelists are finding more that they don’t need to be using Interrupted Kaiju Slumber and a bunch of Kaiju monsters, when they could fill in their Decks with more support for their Zoodiac cards or answers to opposing Zoodiacs. However, we are still seeing many Kaiju in Side Decks for when those situations arise.

Even though Zoodiacs have proven to be the most popular strategy, they didn’t win in YCS Atlanta. That honor went to Corey Roca’s Paleozoic Frog Deck. That strategy is looking to be the most popular non-Zoodiac strategy, with its many ways to disrupt Zoodiac and its easy access to Toadally Awesome. Zombie Lightsworn are the next most popular Deck, mostly using That Grass Looks Greener to get an enormous Graveyard and make huge plays with Mezuki and Fairy Tail – Snow. We’ve also seen Infernoids, Metalfoes, Barrier Statues, and Shaddolls sitting at the top tables yesterday. Only 16 Duelists can make the cut, however! Stay tuned here for more updates on the UDS Winter Invitational, and check our live stream for Feature Matches and commentary!