[MW] New & Old Techs Have Returned To The Competitive Scene

Are you ready for the Tea Party in the Blazing Domain?

This week has been full of crazy news, and crazy things have happened on the market. At the first stop in this week’s snapshot, we will be taking a look at all 3 of the new cards from this year’s Mega Tins. Queen of the Blazing Domain, Dragon Gate, and Bot Herder have had plenty of sales, to the point of buyouts over the week. All 3 help to support specific themes that were printed over the last year, with Queen of the Blazing Domain supporting the Ashened and Fire King themes, Dragon Gate supporting the Ghostrick, Materiactor, and Purrely themes, and Bot Herder supporting the Kaiju and Mimighoul themes. 

First, let’s take a look at Queen of the Blazing Domain. She cannot be destroyed by card effects, which is a bonus if you destroy a copy of Veidos the Eruption Dragon you control. She allows you to target up to 2 cards you control, including at least 1 face-up Spell/Trap card, to destroy them, and if you do, you can Special Summon the Queen from your hand. Then, she gains additional effects depending on how many cards you destroyed. If you destroy just 1 card, she returns herself to the hand during the End Phase of the next turn, but if you destroy 2 cards, she gains the following effect: “Any monster sent from the field to your opponent’s GY is banished instead.” Essentially, she is a walking Dimensional Fissure with 3000 ATK that additionally works with Chaotic Elements, which makes her an extremely powerful card in the right decks.

Dragon Gate happens to be the most interesting one of the three, as you can Xyz Summon it by using a Rank 3 or lower Xyz monster you control as material and transfer its materials to Dragon Gate, but you cannot use it as an Xyz Material the turn it was Xyz Summoned. The best thing about this card is that you can make it attack all monsters your opponent controls, once each, and by detaching any number of materials from it, it gains 1000 ATK for each card type among the detached cards (Monster, Spell, or Trap), and if it does, all your opponent’s monsters lose the same amount of ATK. By being able to make it attack everything and have it be maxed out at 4100 ATK, this single Xyz Monster can wipe the opponent’s entire board and possibly end the game extremely quickly if the opponent has no interruptions to stop this card.

Bot Herder happens to be the most important of the three since it supports Mimighoul, and artwise, it is a part of the Cyberse Maliss lore. This card allows you to target 1 monster your opponent controls, and if that monster was originally owned by you, you can apply these effects in sequence: “Inflict 200 damage to your opponent” and “take control of all monsters your opponent controls, except that monster.” The best part is it doesn’t have the slightest ounce of “once per turn” on this card, so you can activate it as many times as you possibly can, so you can break the opponent’s board if you give them a Kaiju or Mimighoul monster.

With it being brand new, this card will suffer from multiple buyouts over the course of its life, and only time will tell when it will see play within the top cuts at major events.

With Zoodiac now possessing 3 copies of Zoodiac Barrage and getting back Zoodiac Drident to Limited status, it’s worth noting that they and plenty of other Xyz Decks have been using Divine Arsenal AA-ZEUS – Sky Thunder as well. This card has gone up in price over time, as it never saw a reprint in any of the Rarity Collection sets over the past two years. Each copy is above $7 on the market, which is shocking to see for this powerful Xyz monster. For one thing, it’s easy to bring out, as you can Xyz Summon it during a turn an Xyz monster battle simply by using pretty much any Xyz Monster in the game as material, and it even transfers their materials to ZEUS. The effect that makes this card the menace that it is is that by detaching 2 materials from itself, it sends all other cards on the field to the GY. This can be extremely dangerous, as it can be activated as many times as possible as long as you have 2 materials to detach. ZEUS can also attach any card from your hand, deck, or Extra Deck to itself as material whenever another card(s) you control is destroyed by battle or by an opponent’s card effect. This allows you to use the previous effect once more if you get 2 materials total on it again.

Being an amazing boss monster for the Xyz Pool, it’ll be interesting to see when it will see a new reprint in the future, as each copy will slowly increase more and more as time goes on.

With Moon of the Closed Heaven receiving the Forbidden status on the latest Forbidden & Limited List, players have turned to running the Speedroid or Radiant Typhoon engine. These engines provide 2 Level 3 monsters to use for the Xyz Summon of Melomelody the Brass Djinn. Being a LIGHT Rank 3 Fiend monster, this card can bridge any deck into the Fiendsmith engine. Players will test this out for a while, even if it plays more into Nibiru, the Primal Being’s Summon count, than prior. 

No matter what, this shows the player base will do anything to play one of the best engines in the game, especially if they utilize deck space for a card like Melomelody.

We’ve returned to K9 Vanquish Soul as they try out “Infernoble Arms – Durendal” once again. When this card is equipped with a monster, it allows you to add 1 Level 5 or lower FIRE Warrior monster from your deck to your hand, and then you destroy Durendal. With the limitation of Vanquish Soul Razen, this gives you additional ways to access the card, so you don’t have to use up your only copy of Stake Your Soul! to do so. Adding additional consistency to Vanquish Soul is neat, as this has caught on time and time again. But on the other hand, players are using copies of Rescue-ACE Impulse and Rescue-ACE Fire Attacker to make up for the loss of the FIRE monsters, along with Fire Attacker allowing you to draw 2 cards if your opponent adds a card to the hand outside of drawing them. Hopefully, Vanquish Soul will see new additions coming up at the YCSs that will take place this weekend.

Losing consistency is hard for any deck and hopefully this is enough to push the deck so it is still in the top 10 decks to play in this format. Only time will show us what will be the best of the best.

Finally, to wrap things up, let’s look at a decent tech card still in this format, Book of Eclipse. Being able to flip all monsters on the field face-down can be amazing for breaking any board. As a downside, all face-down monsters your opponent controls are flipped up during the End Phase, and they draw cards for each one flipped up this way. From stopping multiple combo decks to hurting the end board of the opponent, Book of Eclipse has found a home in the Side Decks for many players since it can also be used to force the opponent to use a copy of Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring or another negation they have set up to stop your push.

With plenty of this card’s copies going up slowly, it’s great to see plenty of players making the move for this powerful Spell Card to use against Yummy and many other decks in the current format.

With the Genesys Format being revealed this week and a total of 2 YCSs happening this weekend in Lille, France, and Lima, Peru, and next week, we will look at some of the most surprising tech cards that caught the players’ attention to look at for their upcoming events on the regional and local levels.

Edited and co-written by Angryjon