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The WCQ season is finally here with a Glorious Gallery.

Players are preparing for their Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Qualifier events, and this has caused plenty of cards to start rising. With Forbidden Crown cementing itself as one of the top cards of the format, even Yummy is still running around, and plenty of past format cards are rising in the shadows. So let’s dive into this market watch and reveal the cards that players have been picking up for the WCQ season.

Preparations for the World Championship Qualifiers

It’s a no-brainer that Forbidden Crown’s price has been rising constantly as time goes on, as it’s seeing tons of play in a majority of Side Decks and a few playing it in their Main Deck. Thanks to this card, you choose 1 face-up monster on that field and apply many effects on it for that turn. These effects negate that monster’s effects, as well as prevent it from attacking, prevent it from being destroyed by battle or card effects, prevent it from being affected by activated card effects (except its own), prevent it from being tributed, and finally, prevent it from being used as material for a Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, or Link Summon. This card has been the most effective against Kewl Tune, as it shuts off one of their monsters from being able to Synchro Summon or even stops Branded by going after Blazing Cartesia. Even with a reprint in the Winner’s Pack 2026-2027 Season coming soon in Emblazoned Ultra Rare, it’ll still be slightly hard to pull, as the pack only contains 1 card, and there are 40 different options.

Along with Forbidden Crown, The Fallen & The Virtuous is another useful board breaker in this new format, and players are picking up additional copies to use in their Decks. Its first effect lets you send an Extra Deck monster that mentions Fallen of Albaz to the GY in order to let you target a face-up card on the field and destroy it. You can use this to simply remove a card from your opponent’s field, but it can also be handy when used on your own cards, as it helps you dodge Forbidden Crown, Forbidden Droplet, or effects that target monsters you control to let them resolve their effects. This card’s second effect lets you Special Summon a monster from either GY if there is an Ecclesia monster in your field or GY to gain back advantage or to take something from the opponent’s GY if they have a plan to use that card during a different turn or phase in the Duel.

Power Patron and Elfnote have made their mark so far in the Blazing Dominion format, and Medius the Pure has been rising slowly but has halted with the new Winner’s Pack reprint being announced, as that will be released later this year alongside a new reprint in Magnificent Monsters as well. Being the main monster seen in Artmage, DoomZ, Elfnote, and Pure Power Patron, this card’s first effect can let you add to your hand, or Special Summon, any Power Patron monster from your Deck. Then, if this card is in your GY, you can shuffle 1 monster from your hand or face-up field into the Deck to Special Summon Medius from your GY as a free extender, but it banishes itself when it leaves the field. Being run in all of the themes from his lore, he helps with the consistency of seeing your Power Patrons but is also a Level 4, thus making it handy for Synchro or Xyz Summons. It even helps DoomZ when they get hit with a Solemn Warning, as Medius can just Special Summon himself back from the GY.

A Bao A Qu, the Lightless Shadow, has popped up in a handful of lists recently, mainly Fiendsmith Yubel, Fiendsmith Ryzeal, and even Gem-Knight variants with Dispatchparazzi as their generic Fiend Monster. This card is extremely powerful, especially with its Quick Effect, as you can discard 1 card from your hand to either destroy 1 card on the field or banish A Bao A Qu you control to Special Summon 1 LIGHT or DARK monster from your GY. This card can also draw cards equal to the number of monsters with different Types in your GY during each of your Standby Phases, then place cards from your hand to the bottom of your Deck equal to the number you drew, which can help fix your hands, provided the card survives into the next turn. 

Even with a few of these cards up on the consideration block to be reprinted soon, players are mainly picking up their cards for the upcoming World Championship Qualifier events. It’s expected for a few other cards to start spiking as well as it gets closer to the NA and EU WCQ events next month on July 10-12th.

The Past Format Shocks

The Wind-Up/Inzektor format has been seeing a few cards pick up in sales, and Wind-Up Factory is one of them. This card hasn’t been reprinted since Turbo Pack: Booster Eight, and it’s one of the important cards in the Deck. Once per turn, it can add any Level 4 or lower Wind-Up monster from your Deck to your hand if you activate the effect of a Wind-Up monster. This card’s effect is a “soft once per turn,” so if you have multiple copies on the field, you can trigger each of them to net three total searches off of 1 Wind-Up monster effect. It’s strange that this card hasn’t seen a reprint in 14 years, unlike Wind-Up Magician, Shark, and even Zenmaity, who all saw reprints in the TCG’s Rarity Collection series.

One of the few Kashtira cards to not have a reprint happens to be Kashtira Riseheart. Riseheart has been rising in price as a central piece of their strategy, as you can Special Summon this card from your hand if you control a Kashtira monster, but you are locked into Xyz Monsters for the rest of the turn. During the turn this card was Special Summoned, you can banish 1 Kashtira card from your Deck, then banish the top 3 cards of your opponent’s Deck face-down, to make Riseheart a Level 7 to let you Xyz Summon a Kashtira Shangri-Ira or, back in 2023, a Kashtira Arise-Heart. You can also Xyz Summon other cards like Number 11: Big Eye, Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack, or Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon, depending on the situation you’re in.

Cookie Cutter Chaos and Goat format have been picking up traction, and Reaper on the Nightmare has been seeing some sales. This card was mainly used as a card to Special Summon off Metamorphosis by tributing a Level 5 monster you control. It can attack your opponent directly and randomly discard a card from their hand. The last time this card saw a reprint was in Dark Revelation Volume 1 in 2005. Being a card that cannot be destroyed by battle is great to have if you need a backup plan to wait out a few turns to see if you can win.

Without a reprint since 2014, Mavelus has been nearly wiped off the TCG market, where it’s demanding $50 and above for a single copy. Being mainly used in the February to May 2014 formats, it saw plenty of play in Harpie Lady lists as it granted you access to an additional WIND Winged Beast monster to make Lightning Chidori for free removal. This card was also seen in 2020 with Adamancipator to put a WIND monster in your GY for Adamancipator Risen – Raptite to let you quickly target and banish 1 card from your opponent’s GY.

Hopefully in the future, we see many of these cards reprinted for ease of access, especially the cards from Past Formats. Plenty of players are hoping many of the non-Effect Fusion Monsters will be reprinted in Magnificent Monsters so they’ll be in a foil rarity and won’t cost a fortune via trading or purchasing. This weekend, we have the Central American WCQ event, and to all the players that will be participating, I wish you the best of luck and may the best duelist win. Branded and Kewl Tune have a big chance of winning the event, or we could have a surprise winner like Sky Striker again, but we will find out on June 7th!

Edited and co-written by Angryjon