If you read this far to Part 5 of our
reviews, you’ve seen all 16 Skill Cards for the 8 featured characters in Speed Duel GX:
Duelists of Shadows, as
well as their pre-built Duel Decks. But that’s not all you’ll find in the box!
There are more Skills, more support cards,
and just generally fantastic cards that can help get you ready for competition,
as well as those 24 Secret Rare variants! Today we’ll take you through
everything else you’ll find in Duelists
of Shadows, starting with the 4 remaining Skills.
Yesterday,
we showed you Shadow Rider Tania’s Amazoness Deck, and Shadow Rider Titan’s
Archfiends, both playable out of the box in Speed Duel GX:
Duelists of Shadows. Those were two old-school strategies that got a
new lease on life in Speed Duel.
Well get ready,
because it gets even crazier. There are two more characters with pre-built
Decks in Duelists of Shadows, and they’re both repping strategies that never
really saw play until now: Shadow Rider Amnael’s Alchemy Deck, featuring Helios
– The Primordial Sun and Golden Homunculus; and Adrian Gecko’s
Cloudians. Both Decks get a big makeover for their Speed Duel debut, and both
use Skill Cards to do things that would be totally impossible otherwise!
Shadow Rider Amnael
The last of the Shadow
Riders to get pre-built Decks in Duelists of Shadows, Amnael’s Deck is loaded
with popular cards from the early days of Dueling, including some fantastic cards
that have been revisited! You can almost cut the Deck in half, dividing it
between cards that banish stuff and cards that get better when you banish stuff.
Example? Gren Maju
Da Eiza, Golden Homunculus, and Helios – The Primordial Sun
all gain ATK and DEF according to the number of cards banished. You can Special
Summon D.D. Scout Plane in the End Phase of any turn it’s banished, D.D.
Survivor comes back in the End Phase whenever it’s on the field and gets
removed from the game, and D.D.M. – Different Dimension Master can Special
Summon back your banished monsters.
How do you banish
everything? Bazoo the Soul Eater lets you banish up to 3 monsters from
your Graveyard, boosting its ATK by 300 Attack Points for each monster removed,
until the end of your opponent’s next turn. This means Bazoo can go as high as
2500 ATK. You can banish a Normal Trap to boost Diskblade Rider from
1700 ATK to 2200 ATK, Tribe-Shocking Virus lets you banish a monster
from your hand to destroy all face-up monsters on the field with the same Type,
and Banisherofthe Radiance just banishes everything that
would normally go to the Graveyard.
Soul Release, Galaxy Cyclone, and Macro Cosmos
all help banish even more cards. If you’re lucky you may even open a Secret
Rare MacroCosmos, the highest rarity it’s ever appeared in! Amnael’s
main Skill Card, the one you should use with his pre-built Deck, also helps
banish more cards.
Professor of
Alchemy lets you banish a
Level 4 or lower monster from your hand, or face-up from the field, to Special
Summon an Alchemy Beast Token. The Token comes into play as a Level 3
with 500 ATK and 500 DEF, and the same Attribute as the monster you banished.
You can’t Tribute it for anything but the Tribute Summon of Golden
Homunculus, but all your Alchemy Beast Tokens can attack directly
and the Skill combos well with D.D. Scout Plane.
Amnael’s secondary
Skill is Setting Sun, and it’s made for a different kind of strategy:
once per turn during your Main Phase, if you control a monster that has ? ATK
when it’s in your Deck, you can banish a card from your hand and then search a
different monster from your Deck with ? ATK. In addition, it stops your Helios
monsters from being banished. Amnael’s ready-to-play build can’t do much with
this Skill, but Duelists of Shadows includes additional cards for Amnael,
including Helios Duo Magistus and Helios Trice Megistus. Tribute
the Level 4 Helios to Special Summon the Level 6 Duo, then Tribute that to Special
Summon Trice, and you’ll have a Level 8 attacker that gains 300 ATK and DEF for
every banished monster. It attacks twice, and Special Summons itself back from
the Graveyard if it’s ever destroyed in battle.
To recap: Amnael’s
build marks the Speed Duel debut of cards like D.D. Scout Plane and D.D.
Survivor, and offers D.D. Crow and Macro Cosmos as possible
Secret Rares. It’s just so many good cards!
Adrian Gecko
While most of the
characters in Duelists of Shadows are from Season 1 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, a
few aren’t, including Supreme King Jaden and our final fully-fledged featured
Duelist, Adrian Gecko. While Adrian’s Cloudian Deck was always seen as a fun
and casual strategy before, his Skills put him over the top in Speed Duel, and several
of his cards are really good against some of the most popular Speed Duel Decks
today.
The Cloudians are
mostly low-Level monsters with mediocre ATK and literally zero DEF. The trick
is that they gather Fog Counters through a variety of effects, and that lets
them unleash powerful abilities, destroying cards and making Special Summons.
The four basic Cloudians – Cloudian – Acid Cloud, Cloudian – Altus,
Cloudian – Cirrostratus, and Cloudian –Turbulence all get
a single Fog Counter when they’re Normal Summoned, and each one has an effect
you can activate by removing Fog Counters from that specific card: Acid Cloud
destroys a Spell or Trap on the field for 2 Fog Counters, Altus can remove 3 to
discard a random card from your opponent’s hand, Cirrostratus destroys a monster
for 2 Fog Counters and you can remove a Fog Counter from Turbulence to Special
Summon a Level 1 Cloudian – Smoke Ball from your Deck or Graveyard.
The problem? Every one
of those monsters needs multiple Fog Counters to work, but they only get one
when they’re Normal Summoned. In the past, Cloudian fans had to struggle and use
other cards to gather enough Fog Counters for their simple monster effects. Cloudian
Squall’s a Continuous Spell that places a Fog Counter on each face-up
monster…but it doesn’t work until your Standby Phase, which means you can’t
just plonk down a Cloudian and immediately use its ability.
Fog Control’s a Quick-Play Spell that sticks 3 Fog
Counters on any face-up monster you like, but using one of your in-hand cards
just to get effects that should be free is kind of missing the point. Diamond-Dust
Cyclone’s another Quick-Play that can destroy a monster with Fog Counters
and draw you a card…but the monster needs to have 4 Fog Counters on it.
The good news? Adrian’s
new Fog Warning Skill Card is amazing! Every time you place a Fog
Counter on a monster, it just gets another one. That means Acid Cloud and
Cirrostratus destroy cards the moment they hit the field, and one Turbulence
can Special Summon two copies of Smoke Ball! Suddenly Cloudian Squall looks
like a big threat, placing 2 Fog Counters on every monster in each of your Standby
Phases.
Cloudy Skies of
Grey is Adrian’s secondary
Skill, and it’s a little more aggressive: each time a Cloudian with a Fog
Counter’s destroyed, you can place its Fog Counters on another face-up monster.
That makes it easier to wreck cards with Diamond-Dust Cyclone, and since
Cloudian –Nimbusman gains 500 ATK for every Fog Counter on it,
it’ll skyrocket from its starting 1000 ATK.
Adrian’s strategy
actually has several heavy hitters that can shine in Speed Duels: Cloudian –
Eyeof the Typhoon has a whopping 3000 ATK, and it can change the
Battle Positions of your opponent’s monsters. Fog King is a highlight
too: as a Level 7 it has printed ATK and DEF of 0, but you can Normal Summon it
by Tributing just one monster, or no monsters at all. Then its ATK becomes the
combined original ATK of the monsters you Tributed, and neither player can
Tribute cards as long as it’s on the field. That’s a big deal in Speed Duel:
not only are Tribute Summons more common, but Cyber Angels are also one of the
most popular Decks in tournaments – if your opponent can’t Tribute cards, they
can’t Ritual Summon! Oh, and Fog King even comes as a Secret Rare in Duelists
of Shadows.
You’ve now seen all 8 pre-built character Decks, but we’re not done just yet. There are still 4 more Skill Cards to talk about, plus nearly 40 additional cards to help you customize, and strengthen other strategies for different characters! Join us tomorrow in Part 5 to see everything else Duelists of Shadows has to offer!
Attention
Speed Duelists! On April 22nd, we will implement an updated
events-only Limited List for all Speed Duel Public Events being held at the April North
American Remote Duel Main Event.
The Limited List is legal on the weekend of April 22nd and at future Tier 3 events. Duelists must comply with the list if they wish to participate in Speed Duel Public Events or the Speed Duel Main Event.
Official Tournament Stores may also use the list for their local Speed Duel tournaments.
In
Part 2, we looked at our first pair of Shadow Rider characters making their
debut in Speed
Duel GX: Duelists of Shadows: Nightshroud and Camula. Here in part 3,
we’ll look at two more: Shadow Rider Tania and Shadow Rider Titan. While our
first pair get pre-built Decks in Duelists of Shadows that revolve around huge,
old-school boss monsters, Tania and Titan’s strategies focus on more mid-range
monsters with abilities that make them a nightmare to deal with.
One of the cool things about Duelists of Shadows is that it takes some fan-favorite
strategies from the past and then gives them Skill Cards that make them more
competitive. In this case we’re talking about Amazons and Archfiends, two
throwback themes that earned a place in our hearts…even if they never did well
in tournaments.
If you’ve ever dreamed
of seriously smashing your opponent with either of these two strategies, Duelists
of Shadows can make those dreams into reality. Here’s how they work.
Yesterday
we introduced you to the Speed Duel GX:
Duelists of Shadows box, and we talked about the Decks and Skill Cards
for two of the main characters: alter ego Supreme King Jaden and former Duel
Academy chairman Kagemaru. Eight characters have pre-built Decks in Duelists of
Shadows, and 5 of them are Shadow Riders. The remaining 2 Shadow Riders are
also getting Skill Cards, with many of their cards appearing in the extra additional
cards included in Duelists of Shadows.
Today we’re looking at
two of the Shadow Riders with full Decks: Nightshroud and Camula. Old school Duel
fans may remember that this duo played Decks that echoed a pair of real-world
releases in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG: Nightshroud’s Dragon Deck featured cards from Structure
Deck: Dragon’s Roar, while Camula’s Vampire Deck played picks from Structure
Deck: Zombie Madness. That’s right: these two devious Duelists piloted
Decks that looked a lot like the first two Structure Decks in Yu-Gi-Oh! history,
dating all the way back to 2005!
Fast forward to today
and the Duelists of Shadows box comes with two pre-built Decks that modernize
those old Structure Decks, with new cards and new Skills that make them fiercer
than ever. Those Structure Decks never really made an impact in competitive
Dueling, but the Speed Duel updates are a big step up. Here’s why.
The Speed Duel: Battle City
Box arrived a little over two years ago in December of 2020. Packed
with more than 200 cards, it was loaded with new Skills and smash-hit Secret
Rares and came with 8 Decks that were ready to play, right out of the box. After a wait of a year and a half, we got the
sequel, 2022’s Speed Duel GX:
Duel Academy Box, the first Speed Duel release to introduce characters
and cards from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. And the concept would evolve again just a
few months later, with Speed Duel GX:
Midterm Paradox bringing even more fan-favorite characters to Speed
Duels.
And now, almost one
year after the release of the Duel Academy Box, it’s time for another mega-sized
Speed Duel release! Speed Duel GX:
Duelists of Shadows hit the streets on March 30th, ready to
take Speed Duels to the next level with crazy new Skills, amazing Secret Rares,
and lots of competitive cards revisited. Whether you love Speed Duel or you’re
new to the format, Duelists of Shadows is packed with so much value that you
won’t want to miss it.
The Limited List is legal on the weekend
of January 21st and at future Tier-2 and higher events.
Duelists must comply with the list if they wish to participate in the January
Latin America Remote Duel YCS Speed Duel Public Events or the January North
America Speed Duel Main Event.
After the events, Official Tournament Stores will be able to use the list for Time Wizard Speed Duel tournaments.
Welcome back to class, Duelists! The Speed Duel GX: Midterm Paradox Mini Box is just around the corner headed your way today October 7, and we’re giving you one more article that’s chock full of reveals! We already covered the main characters – Jaden Yuki, Syrus Truesdale, Bastion Misawa, and the Paradox Brothers – but there are a couple more familiar faces in Midterm Paradox. In addition to the 10 Skill Cards for those characters, you’ll also find two more: one for Chumley Huffington in his Speed Duel debut and one that pairs Jaden & Syrus together in a single Skill Card!
These two bonus Skills don’t have pre-built Decks in Midterm Paradox, but you will find extra cards both in this set, and the original Speed Duel GX: Duel Academy Box to build them yourself. There are also more Speed Duel cards that can help you customize your favorite Decks: some to flesh out the characters and give a few nods to key moments in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, and some that are going to make an impact on competitive Speed Dueling.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: the first thing on today’s syllabus is a fan-favorite Duelist with a surprising strategy.
The Speed Duel GX: Midterm Paradox Mini Box is coming out on October 7, packed with 100 Speed Duel cards and 12 new Skills; some for returning characters from the Speed Duel GX: Duel AcademyBox, and some for Duelists making their Speed Duel debut! Each box even comes with 4 Secret Rares from a set of 12, all paying homage to these iconic heroes and rivals.
In Midterm Paradox 101 last week, we showed you the new Skill Cards for Jaden and Syrus. We talked about how their pre-built Decks work, and how you can build your own Decks for those two characters. But grab your notebook and get ready to study up, because today’s lesson will teach you all about the remaining featured Duelists in Midterm Paradox Bastion Misawa and the Paradox Brothers.
The Speed Duel: Battle
City Box and the Speed Duel
GX: Duel Academy Box changed the landscape of Speed Dueling. Two massive boxed sets, both with more than 200
Speed Duel cards, they each offered a ton of value, a great way to jump into
Speed Duels, and a one-box experience to bring Yu-Gi-Oh! to your game night.
Each one had great Secret Rares too – cards that were popular for historic Time
Wizard formats, making them collectible and a blast to open.
Now, for the first time ever, the Speed Duel Box concept is getting a spinoff! The new Speed Duel GX: Midterm Paradox Mini Box arrives October 6*, loaded with new cards and new Skills for characters that made their Speed Duel debut in the Duel Academy Box. It also introduces new Yu-Gi-Oh! GX characters to Speed Duels, and sneaks in some awesome cards to shake up the competition.
