The 150^th Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series tournament is taking place this weekend in Columbus, Ohio! We’ll be broadcasting the event live on our official YouTube channel for everyone that won’t be able to make it this weekend and it’ll be the first time that Crossed Souls has been legal for YCS competition, so you won’t want to miss it! Speaking of Crossed Souls, it’s been tournament legal for a week now and many cards have already seen play in National Championships across the world. With another week of experience with the new cards, along with the allure of winning an anniversary YCS event, it’s reasonable to assume that we’re going to see a lot of strategies influenced by CROS cards this weekend. But which cards will make the biggest impact over the weekend? Here are my picks for what will be the Top 5 most impactful Crossed Souls cards this weekend!

5. Ritual Beast Ulti-Gaiapelio

There was a real battle for the 5 spot on this list between about 5 different cards, but as of last night, I had narrowed it down to 2 choices: Clear Wing Synchro Dragon, or Ritual Beast Ulti-Gaiapelio. I have no doubt that Clear Wing Synchro Dragon is going to see play this weekend, it’s way too good against too many good Decks not to, but Ritual Beast Ulti-Gaiapelio has four things the Synchro Monster does not: 1. Coverage against every type of card. 2. Unlimited uses each turn provided your hand holds out. 3. Enough ATK to fight and win against every commonly played monster. 4. Is attached to that one Deck that no one wants to be paired up against.

Ritual Beasts are basically the Infernity Deck of the 2014-2015 dueling season, and they just got their Infernity Barrier. I don’t know how many people will actually play Ritual Beasts this weekend, probably not many for a variety of reasons, but I do know that everyone has them in the back of their mind filed under “Things I Don’t Want to See”, and that’s a big impact in and of itself.

4. Tellarknight Ptolemaeus

Shaddolls have been undergoing a bit of a renaissance over the past month with a lot of high finishes in a lot of tournaments. That said, I think Shaddolls are about to run into a brick wall this weekend, and Ptolemaeus is a big part of the reason why. Decks that can easily Summon Stellarknight Constellar Diamond are at an advantage over Shaddolls, but before Crossed Souls you could count the number of Decks capable of Summoning Diamond on one hand, and the number capable of doing it easily on one finger (it’s ‘tellarknights).

Enter Tellarknight Ptolemaeus. Now any Deck that can field 2 Level 4 monsters can drop Diamond on you in Game 1. One of the big stories of the weekend will undoubtedly be the mental game between Nekroz players working Ptolemaeus into their strategy and how the Shaddoll players adjust their Decks and their tactics to account for their greatest foe potentially popping up every game of every single round.

3. Oracle of Zefra

You may be laughing now, but you won’t be laughing at all when you’re losing to a turn 2 Number 86: Heroic Champion – Rhongomyniad with 5 Xyz Materials, or when ‘tellarknights start dropping Synchro Monsters on you, or when your opponents are choosing their draws, searching constantly, Summoning infinite monsters, taking all of your monsters, blasting you with infinite removal, and never have a card in hand to eat with Nekroz of Trishula. Why is all of this possible?

Everyone knows that Pendulum Monsters and Pendulum Summoning are incredibly strong, but most Duelists have only been exposed to it through Qliphorts. All that started to change last weekend, and it’s going to keep changing as we roll through the biggest events of the year. The only things holding Zefra-powered strategies back are time available to develop them and the possibility of holding back the most devastating strategies for the World Championship Qualifiers so that rest of the world will not have had a month to think about how to overcome them.

2. Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit

If Enemy Controller is 2 cards in 1 and Spellbook of Fate is 3 cards in one, then Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit is 4 cards in 1. It’s a Level 3 LIGHT Psychic Tuner, it’s a Mystical Space Typhoon, it’s an Exiled Force, and in a pinch, it’s a reasonable defender too without sacrificing any of the previous three things.

This card is so high up on my list not just because a ton of people are going to play it and it interacts favorably with a lot of other powerful cards, but also because there are a lot of people that don’t understand how it works. When you have a powerful card that lots of people play and lots of people don’t understand, that’s the perfect storm for a card to take a big tournament by storm.

1. Lose 1 Turn

In my eyes, the cards that make the most impact are the cards that create new strategies or drastically elevate the standing of multiple current strategies. Lose 1 Turn is absolutely the latter. In fact, one of the very reasons that I expect Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit to be so impactful this weekend is because of its interaction with this card’s effect to change monsters to Defense Position.

With Lose 1 Turn, the ever-deadly Qliphorts are back in the mix, and Yosenju can take the next step towards being a constant fixture of high-Level competition. Yang Zing, which have already been on the upswing since last weekend, can employ the card as well to protect their own Life Points before dropping Synchro Monsters that are immune to their own Trap Card. This card, and Mistake, are the primary reasons that players that have long since booted Mystical Space Typhoon out of their Main Deck are considering it once again, and I would be shocked if we don’t see Decks propped up by this card deep into Day 2 of the tournament.

And that does it for my picks! Agree? Disagree? Make sure to subscribe now to our official YouTube channel so that you’ll know exactly when our broadcast goes live on Saturday morning!