The last time we saw Jesse Kotton, he was getting whomped by fellow Torontonian Dale Bellido in his Round 1 Feature Match yesterday. But Bellido is out of the Top Cut, and Kotton is still in contention here in the Top 8! His opponent this round is another of our last-men-standing, Gabriel El-Allie, from Michigan. Both duelists are playing Pure Zoodiacs. Let’s get started.
Thomas Mak won YCS Chicago back in 2014, a little over three years ago. Now the Philadelphian Duelist is back in the hunt for title gold, playing Pure Zoodiacs in the Top 16. His opponent is another relatively recent star in the Dueling world, Mason Mattila. The Greenbay Duelist racked up a ton of Top Cut showings with Kozmos in 2016, including a top at YCS Minneapolis, then topped repeatedly with Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Artifact Invoked Windwitch Decks earlier this year.
Yesterday we showed you Eric Dalton’s Dinosaur FTK deck when he won our Round 8 Feature Match. With an 8-2 record he’s now in the Top 32, and we’re going to check in to see how his strategy works in a Top 32 environment, as more players start to learn about the Deck he’s running.
Ricky Lee traveled here this weekend from Grand Rapids playing his True Draco Zoodiac deck. He’s up against Richard Yam this round, one of the Canadian representatives at the World Championship this year! Hailing from Guelph, Yam is running a pretty different build of Pure Zoodiacs; he doesn’t play Zoodiac Ratpier or Zoodiac Combo, but runs Zoodiac Bunnyblast instead for some extra combos that can make the most of weaker hands.
Aaron Furman and Tom Braudo are the only two undefeated Duelists left in the tournament, and while that alone might not be enough for a Round 9 Feature Match on its own, an extra factor makes this Match intriguing: Tom Braudo isn’t just undefeated; he’s undefeated with Demise True Dracos. As you saw yesterday in our Top Table Updates, pure True Draco Decks aren’t big in this tournament, and this is actually our first Feature Match with the strategy.
There’s one story that’s being flying under the radar here at the YCS, but now that we’re in the last round of Day 1 it’s time to get a close up look at it. Eric Dalton’s 6-1 today playing an FTK Dinosaur deck that leverages Link Monsters to make game off as little as two cards. Remember all that hype about massive Link Summoning combos looping Firewall Dragon?
Eric Dalton is playing the Deck the internet warned you about.
Dalton’s opponent this Round is Tucker Lau, traveling this weekend from Boston to play a more conventional True Draco Zoodiac Deck. It’s unclear right now how many people know what Dalton’s playing, and I’m not sure if Lau knows what he’s up against.
Aaron Furman and Chris LeBlanc are two of the most decorated competitors in the room: Furman is a UDS Champion, a YCS Champion, and a former competitor in the World Championship. Chris LeBlanc has two Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series wins.
Both of these Duelists are friends, both of them travel together and play on the same team, and they’ve never actually played each other before in a YCS or World Champinship Qualifier. Now we’ll finally get to see them slug it out in a YCS Feature Match, as they go head-to-head in a True Draco Zoo mirror Match.
Yang Zing True King Dinosaurs had some great showings in Regional Qualifier Top Cuts last weekend, and the question of whether that deck would make the Top Tables was on a lot of player’s minds heading into this tournament. Tyler Tran is 3-0 so far with his own version of the strategy, and now we’ll see if he can keep up the streak.
His opponent is Jeffrey Leung, piloting a Pure Zoodiac Deck here this weekend. This is the matchup that defines the viability of the Dinosaur variants, so this is going to be really interesting to watch. Both of these competitors are basically locals in the Greater Toronto Area, with Tran hailing from Brampton, and Leung living in Markham, so we’re kind of getting a snapshot of the GTA metagame right here, right now.
There are dozens of celebrated Duelists here at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, but when Bounty Duelists were announced this morning, no one got more applause than Canada’s 2017 Dragon Duel World Champion, Ryan Yu! Yu started his run at Worlds with a draw and a loss, but proceeded to win out every following Round, capturing the World Championship with Chain Burn. Today he’s playing Windwitch Invoked.
His opponent this round is Cameron Chin from Rochester, New York. Nineteen years old, he traveled here to compete in his second Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series tournament. He’s playing Pure Zoodiacs.
Both duelists made small talk before the Match began. “Congratulations by the way,” Chin remarked, referring to Yu’s Worlds win. “I was rooting for you the entire time.” They quipped back and forth with Yu teasing the notion that he might be running Chain Burn.
