One of the things we tested during development of Battle Pack 2: War of the Giants was the possibility of a limited re-draw mechanic. We’ve decided to go ahead and implement this, for BP2 sealed play events.

A re-draw is when you can decide, before the start of a Duel, that your starting hand just isn’t going to work for you, and go ahead and draw a different starting hand, instead. The most common situation where this would happen is if you draw a hand full of nothing but high-Level Tribute Monsters, with no viable way to summon them. This is very unlikely, considering the construction of BP2, but it’s still possible depending on your card pool. A re-draw lets you get around this.

A re-draw should be something you do only as a last resort, so we’re limiting it to once per Match. (Not once per Duel, once per MATCH.)

.

Here are the exact mechanics:

*You only get 1 re-draw per Match.
*Each Duelist must decide if they would like to re-draw their starting hand after they draw their initial 5 cards but before the Duelist who is going first draws their first card of the Duel. (In other words, you do it when there are 5 cards in your hand, not 6.)
*The Duelist who will go first in the Duel decides whether to re-draw first.  Then the Duelist who goes second decides whether to re-draw after the first Duelist has decided.  If the Duelist who goes first decides not to re-draw their hand, they then cannot decide to re-draw after the second Duelist has decided to re-draw or not.

When a player decides to re-draw:

1. The Duelist places their starting 5 cards on the bottom of their deck (in any order).
2. The Duelist then draws 5 new cards from the top of their deck.
3. After the 5th card is drawn for the new hand, the Duelist then shuffles their deck using the normal deck shuffling policy.

In competitive play, you should note on your scorepad whether you (or your opponent!) have used your re-draw or not this match (such as by writing “RE-DRAW USED” at the top). This is so you don’t forget if it’s been used or not.

.

Even when testing with the re-draw available, we rarely took advantage of it. We would often ask ourselves, “Can I make this hand work?” And usually, the answer was “yes” so we would just continue play with our original hand. We would also find ourselves often thinking that even though a hand might not be perfect, if it was playable then it was better to save the re-draw for later, in case you got a really bad hand in a future Duel. (Naturally, if you’re in the 3rd Duel of a Match, this is no longer a consideration, so re-draws were more common in the 3rd Duel than anywhere else.)

.

The official policy documents will be updated soon to reflect this change. But feel free to use it starting immediately. If playing at an Official Tournament Store, make sure the tournament organizer and judge are on-board with this before the event starts.

.

Regarding Deck Size

I also want to talk a bit about the minimum Deck Size you should use when doing sealed pack.

You can do sealed play with all sorts of configurations. The most common minimum Deck Sizes are 40, 30, and 20. The most common number of packs is 1 or 2 packs more than required to give you that many cards. So, for example, 10 packs (50 cards) with a minimum deck size of 40, or 5 packs (25 cards) with a minimum deck size of 20.

With Battle Pack 1: Epic Dawn, you usually needed to have that extra ‘padding’ because some of the cards from your packs would have to go in the Extra Deck. Since there are no Extra Deck cards in War of the Giants, you are no longer bound by this necessity.

The basic question you, and your friends, and your tournament organizer, have to ask is whether you want to implement some sort of deck construction or not.

If you want deck construction, use:
10 packs with a 40 card minimum
OR
10 packs with a 30 card minimum
OR
8 packs with a 30 cards minimum
OR
5 packs with a 20 card minimum

If you want to play with your cards as-is, right out of the packs, use:
8 packs with a 40 card deck
OR
6 packs with a 30 card deck
OR
4 packs with a 20 card deck

.

Our suggestion is to use a 40 card deck (or 40 card deck minimum). The Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME is designed as a 40-card deck game, and this holds true for sealed, as well. You can play with a smaller deck to save money, and that’s fine. However, it does impact the gameplay, since certain cards (especially cards that let you draw more cards) have a much bigger impact. You’re also likely, in repeated games, to see the same cards over and over and over again if you’re playing with a smaller deck size, which isn’t quite as interesting.

So we strongly suggest a 40-card deck. Either 8 packs, giving you a 40-card deck played right out of the packs, or 10 packs with deck construction and a minimum deck size of 40.