Welcome to the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series here in Secaucus, New Jersey!

We’re here at the Meadowlands Exposition Center, preparing for the final YCS of the season! This tournament will shape the meta for the upcoming World Championship Qualifiers. We’ve got 1312 Duelists registered, all competing to become a YCS Champion!

We’ve seen a lot of changes to the Dueling card pool since the previous YCS in Memphis, Tennessee. First, a new Forbidden & Limited List shook things up with some heavy changes to most of the top strategies. The two top strategies, Pendulum Magicians and True Draco, saw cards Forbidden or Limited, making them more evenly matched with the rest of the playing field. True Draco are an interesting case, because while they saw Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King Forbidden, they also got lessened restrictions on Ignis Heat, the True Dracowarrior and Dinomight Knight, the True Dracofighter. True Draco may still be a contender with a different take on the strategy, without Master Peace. Pendulum Magicians, on the other hand, lost access to Astrograph Sorcerer and the Supreme King Dragon Starving Venom first-turn-win combo. The Deck was still very powerful even without Starving Venom, but will it be able to compete without Astrograph? Finally, in addition to these two strategies, we saw one other major change in the Forbidden & Limited List: That Grass Looks Greener is Forbidden. 60-card Decks looking to abuse their Graveyard will no longer be a common sight. Will we still see Zombies and Burning Abyss succeed without their Greener Grass?

The new Forbidden & Limited List was only a small part of what’s new here at YCS Secaucus – we also have two new Booster Packs being used in their first YCS! Flames of Destruction has already made some impact at Regional Qualifiers, giving new cards to Altergeists, Trickstars, Gouki, and Vendreads to name just a few. There are also some very strong tech cards in Flames of Destruction, including Infinite Impermanence, Red Reboot, and the new Knightmare Link Monsters. Then, we have Dark Saviors introducing new Vampire cards, as well as the new Sky Striker cards and monsters Fur Hire. We’ve only had one week with Dark Saviors so far, so this tournament will be the first major testing ground for these new cards.

Round 1 is about to get underway – it’s time to Duel!