YCS Indianapolis Tech Update
Here are some of the trends that we’ve seen here at YCS Indianapolis!
Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit
Interruptions from the hand can be extremely powerful, as we’ve seen with cards like Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, Droll & Lock Bird, and Nibiru the Primal Being, among many others. One card that has been incredibly popular this weekend is Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit, a card that you can discard from your hand when your opponent activates the effect of a card on the field in order to destroy that card.
This card has proven to be devastating in the current format! The Tenpai Dragon strategy, introduced in Legacy of Destruction, can be a lot to handle. Sangen Summoning is the Deck’s Field Spell, and it makes your FIRE Dragon monsters unaffected by the opponent’s activated effects during Main Phase 1. It can also allow you to activate its effect to add a Tenpai Dragon monster your Deck to your hand, and then discard a card; however, this leaves the card vulnerable to Ghost Ogre, meaning that your opponent can now freely interact with your FIRE Dragon monsters again!
Another Deck that got recent support is Melodious, with powerful new Pendulum and Fusion Monsters. One of those cards is Couplet the Melodious Songstress, a Pendulum Monster with a Pendulum Effect that allows you to search for a Melodious Spell or Trap Card. This is one of the Deck’s most important cards, allowing you to access the new Melodious Concerto, a powerful Fusion Spell that lets you conduct a Fusion Summon using material from your hand, field, or Pendulum Zones! Holding onto Ghost Ogre to destroy Couplet makes it that much harder for your opponent to Fusion Summon, making Ghost Ogre a powerful tech card against the strategy.
Skill Drain
The ability to negate your opponent’s monsters’ effects is incredibly powerful! Recently, we’ve seen cards like Infinite Impermanence and Effect Veiler in the Main Deck, as players try and use these cards to stop their opponents from starting off combos or fully establish their fields. In fact, some players have decided that those cards aren’t enough, and have chosen to add cards like Ghost Mourner & Moonlight Chill for additional effect negation.
Skill Drain is a card that can be even more impactful. As a Trap Card, it’s naturally a little bit slower than the previously mentioned cards, as it cannot be activated from the hand. However, here at YCS Indianapolis, we’ve seen Skill Drain emerge as a powerful Side Deck option that players are siding in when choosing to go first. Skill Drain requires you to pay 1000 Life Points, but negates the effects of all monsters on the field, so this card is able to negate the effects of all of your opponent’s monsters at once! For Decks that can Summon a lot of monsters with high stats, Skill Drain can be an effective way to simplify the game state and allow you to overwhelm your opponent!
Crossout Designator
Disruption can be incredibly powerful, with many players choosing to play interruptions that can be activated from the hand when going second, such as Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, Infinite Impermanence, and Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit, among many others. Crossout Designator is a powerful tech card that can be used to help play through these interruptions, as long as you have a card with the same name in your own Main Deck that you can banish.
Of course, Crossout Designator is useful even beyond these interruptions from the hand, as it can be used to negate cards in various other scenarios. For instance, if two players are playing the same strategy, many cards across the two Main Decks will be the same; just imagine negating the effect of your opponent’s Ostinato in the Melodious mirror Match! Similarly, if you can anticipate what cards your opponent might try to include from their Side Deck, you can use Crossout Designator to play through them. For example, a player going second that is afraid of Dimensional Barrier might include one copy in their Side Deck as a target for Crossout Designator, allowing them to push through it!
These are just some of the hot tech cards that are seeing play here at YCS Indianapolis!
