Both days here at YCS Niagara feature some ENORMOUS Public Events that stand apart from the main YCS tournament, and one of the BIGGEST is always the ATTACK OF THE GIANT CARD!! tournament. The Giant Cards up for grabs this weekend are all bangers, and here in Day 1 of YCS Niagara two different Giant-Sized prizes are up for grabs: Heart of the Blue-Eyes and Red-Eyes Black Fullmetal Dragon! With no further ado, here are your winners from the Saturday ATTACK OF THE GIANT CARD!!
From left to right: 2nd Place Finisher Felix Hamm, 1st Place Winner Bazil Batise, and 3rd Place Finisher Ryan Phillip!
Congratulations to our Saturday winners, and good luck to all the Duelists competing tomorrow, in Day 2’s Sunday ATTACK OF THE GIANT CARD!! tournament, where even more fantastic Giant Cards will be on the line.
Ryan Yu is coming into YCS Niagara Falls hot, fresh off his win at the 2024 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championships, where he won the Master Duel World Championships with his teammates and fellow Canadians Jesse Kotton and Raymond Dai. He’s 5-1 here today with Sky Striker, a deck few Duelists would see coming in today’s field, but one that’s proving to be a surprisingly good call thanks to current tournament trends. And oh, that’s right: Dominus Impulse.
His opponent this round is Thomas Reber, a Tenpai Dragon Duelist who traveled here this weekend from Reading, Pennsylvania. With two explosive, battle-oriented Decks in the mix this Match could go either way, but whoever takes it, it probably won’t take long.
Toronto’s one of the Dueling world’s biggest and most respected hubs, and every YCS event here in Niagara Falls always serves as a showcase for some of Toronto’s biggest talents. In this Feature Match, we’ll see Torontonians John Wilkin and Bert Balogh go head-to-head, as Wilkin brings his Snake-Eye Fire King deck into battle against Balogh’s Yubel build.
The Fire King deck got a significant boost from Rage of the Abyss with the release of Fire King Courtier Ulcanix and Dominus Impulse, so watch for those cards to make an impact in this Feature. Are Fire Kings back on top? Or will the unstoppable run of Yubel continue? We were about to find out.
Wilkin opened the first Duel with just one Set card.
There’s a LOT of cool Decks on the tournament floor here in Day of YCS Niagara Falls, and while we already showed you two returning strategies with brand-new innovations in our Round 1 Feature Matches, this time we’re gonna show you something completely different: Maciej Jan Michaelec is piloting a Runick Dark Magician Deck today, leveraging Toy Box, ToySoldier, and Toy Tank from Battles of Legend: Terminal Revenge to score huge draw power with Magicians’ Souls. From there it… well, you’ll see what it does.
His opponent is Dwyght Hezekiah Mack, playing a more traditional Runick Stun strategy. Runick Stun’s a provent tournament menace, locking down opponents and banishing all their cards to break their plays, and eventually Decking them out! So which build’s better: the proven tournament standby, or the wacky pile with Toys and Dark Magician cards? We were about to find out…
The Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series is steeped in Dueling history and traditions unique to the YCS circuit. Case in point? Bounties! Every YCS weekend sees a handful of competitors dubbed “Bounty Duelists”, making them part of a unique secondary prizing system.
How does it work? Every Round, each Bounty Duelist adds four booster packs to their personal hoard. When they win a Match, the Bounty Duelist gets to claim two of those packs, which are removed from the hoard and theirs to keep. The remaining two packs for the round are added to the hoard, so as long as the Bounty Duelist keeps winning the bounty on their head keeps getting bigger. But if the Bounty Duelist is ever defeated, their opponent claims the whole hoard: so in Round 1 that could be four packs, but in Round 2 it grows to six, Round 3 it grows to eight, and so on.
So what are they playing for? This weekend the packs our Bounty Duelists will look to earn and defend are Turbo Pack: Booster Six!
Rage of the Abyss has arrived, and with it a new era of competition!
The September update to the Forbidden & Limited List tilted the field: Yubel Duelists won YCS Lille and YCS Cancun, and all three members of the winning team at YCS Santiago piloted Yubel Decks to victory. But the game has changed! The final core booster set of 2024 is here, bringing with it new support and new upgrades for the Sinful Spoils and Snake-Eye themes, which may shift the power balance in Championship-level Dueling.
The North America Remote Duel YCS demonstrated the incredible range of strategies that are possible in the new Advanced Format, just in time for the North America World Championship Qualifier in 2 weeks! Now that it’s over, check out the Top 4 Decks from the YCS Main Event…
Sky Strikers got a bit of a boost with the new Forbidden & Limited List moving Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage! to 2-per-Deck, and it bog buffed again with the release of Sky Striker Ace – Azalea in Battles of Legend: Monstrous Revenge. The Deck’s back in competition this weekend, and Dylan Fricker’s managed to take Raye, Roze, and the rest of the squad all the way to the Top 16.
His opponent this Round is Enzo Velasco, piloting a Kashtira Deck that’s adapted for the new era of Limited Arise-Heart. With one Deck powered up for the current Advanced Format and the other notably nerfed, it might be interesting to see which one moves on to the Top 8.
