The final Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series of the season has concluded! As everyone begins to shift gears for the World Championship Qualifiers, all eyes were on YCS Secaucus, New Jersey to see what strategy would emerge victorious. This was the first North American event since the most recent Forbidden & Limited List update, as well as the release of both Flames of Destruction and Dark Saviors, so no one knew what to expect.
The final Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series Tournament of the current format is over! Bohdan Temnyk has emerged victories with his Burning Abyss Phantom Knight Deck, cementing the reputation of the Burning Abyss monsters as the dominating force of the current format, while solidifying his own reputation as a YCS Champion. But now that YCS Toronto is finished, Duelists everywhere are looking to the new Advanced Format that will begin tomorrow.
Day 1 of YCS Origins has come to a close. With eight rounds of Swiss play completed, we’ll have two more before cutting to the Top 32. The Duelists advancing to tomorrow’s portion of the tournament will be the ones with at least 16 points, or the top 128 Duelists (whichever group is larger).
This weekend was one to remember! This was the first North American YCS with Shining Victories and the Millennium Pack legal for play, bring strategies new and old to the forefront of competition. In the end, Tahmid Zaman from New York came out on top with his Phantom Knight / Burning Abyss deck, besting 738 other Duelists to claim his first YCS Championship!
1458 Duelists have been eliminated, and a lone champion has been named! Mexico’s Jose Lagunes rose above the competition to take home the trophy with his Performapal Pendulum Deck!
No, this isn’t 2007; Jessy Samek did manage to claim victory in San Jose earning his second title after a long absence from the competitive scene. Samek won the second event he had ever competed in, SJC Philadelphia in 2007, and after eight years he showed everyone that even old dogs can learn new tricks as he Dueled with his Kozmo Deck to take down the main event. He wasn’t the only one to earn a trophy in San Jose though, as Nicholas Hernandez seized his own and became the YCS San Jose Dragon Duel Champion with Tellarknights!
The last time the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series visited Dallas, two-time YCS winner Billy Brake defeated the defending Yu-Gi-Oh! World Champion to claim a legendary third title with a crazy 60-card Deck. The stars must align for Dueling dreams in Dallas though, as this year we saw another miracle with YCS First-Timer Erik Christensen beating out 1,287 competitors, facing off against Matt Kolenda’s Burning Abyss Deck in the finals, with an absurd 16-0 record to become not only a champion, but the first to ever do so piloting Infernoid! Few have ever managed to take down a YCS completely undefeated, the last being TJ Kinsley at the 150th YCS Columbus this past May, but to do so using a strategy that no one else had managed to make the Top Cut with is quite a feat. And if going undefeated and doing so with a unique Deck was not enough, this really cemented itself as a Cinderella story with Christensen having never competed in a YCS before. The combination of attending your first YCS, going undefeated, and doing so with a Deck that others have underestimated is the dream of every Duelist who has not had a chance to show their stuff on the big stage – Christensen accomplishing this shows that it is possible.