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The calm before the WCQ storm.

Chaos Origins is in full swing this week, and there are plenty of cards being bought up for this upcoming weekend’s WCQs in North America, Europe, and Oceanic countries. From Light and Darkness Ritual to Sacred Beasts, and even little techs that could be fun to try out, let’s dive into this week’s market to see what is going on.

Future cards that’ll impact the Meta

With the hype of Light and Darkness Ritual finally underway in the TCG, Soul Resonator has gone up in price once again, as it’s a way to add any Level 4 or lower Fiend monster from your Deck to your hand, all thanks to its Normal/Special Summon effect. The only card you will be searching with this is Griffoh, which starts most of your plays for the “ROLAD” Decks, as its name is one that players have labeled the Deck, since you can quickly discard this card to either make the next battle or effect damage you take this turn 0, or you can set 1 Quick-Play Spell or Trap that mentions Light and Darkness Ritual from your Deck, and it can be activated that turn. Almost every time, you will be setting Mind Shuffle from your Deck as it’s the heart of the new Light and Darkness Ritual theme.

A tech that has been rarely creeping up from the OCG side of techs happens to be Djinn Demolisher of Rituals. This card can be useful in any Ritual Deck, since it can be used as the entire Tribute for a Ritual Summon by banishing the Djinn from your GY, and the Ritual Monster that used this card cannot be targeted by card effects. Pairing this card with Tour Guide from the Underworld to net a free Link-2 is great, while also letting you Ritual Summon Magician of Dark Chaos – Black Chaos, which is already unaffected by other card effects that don’t target it, thus making it a full-on Tower-like monster with the targeting protection. You can also use Zenna’s Deceiving Doll Maidens to send it straight from your Deck to the GY, or if you draw it, you can use it for one of the Link Materials, which is absolutely insane for this tech.

As players are looking forward to playing Angelechy, many are picking up copies of Junk Meister, the “Snake-Eyes Ash” of the Synchron archetype. When this card is in your hand, you can reveal a Warrior or Stardust Synchro Monster in your Extra Deck to Special Summon this card from your hand, but you can only Special Summon Synchro Monsters from your Extra Deck for the rest of the turn. This downside isn’t even a downside. It’s more so just a suggestion in an all-Synchro Deck. If this card is Normal or Special Summoned, you can add a Junk card from your Deck to your hand, which most of the time would be Junk Armor, the “Snake-Eyes Poplar” mixed with “Lonefire Blossom” for the Synchron archetype, as when it’s added to your hand, except by drawing it, you can Special Summon it. Meister also has another effect that can reduce 1 Junk monster you control by up to 2 Levels to help you go into whatever Synchro Monster you want to bring out. With Junk Armor, you can Tribute this card to Special Summon any Junk or Synchron monster from your Deck, which can get a multitude of Tuners for whatever Synchro play you need.

Sacred Beast is a hot topic in the Genesys format, next to Blitzclique, and this has caused a Common from The Dark Illusion to skyrocket in price. This spike for Card of the Soul has slowed down in past days, but it’s still an extremely powerful searcher for the theme, since if you draw it going first, you can add from your Deck to your hand any monster whose ATK and DEF equal your LP, which would be either Infinity of the Sacred Beasts – Raviel, Lord of Phantasms, or Calamity of the Sacred Beasts – Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder, as both can get to any of your Sacred Beasts monsters or Spells, depending on which you need more at a given time.

Looking into the future for the game, there are plenty of unique techs to go around that could appear within the following weeks thanks to the massive WCQ weekend and plenty of other players scoping out what they could use at the next turn.

The Originators of Chaos have arrived

Remember Griffoh? Well, Light and Darkness Ritual seems to be the Deck to beat, rivaling Kewl Tune at the top spot in the meta, and this has led to it being bought up by the players because of how useful the card is. We already discussed how useful its discard effect is above, but did you know that it has one other useful effect? When performing the Ritual Summon of a Level 8 Ritual Monster, you can use this card as the entire Tribute instead, which gives you a massive advantage when paired with Light and Darkness Ritual’s effect, which lets you also banish a number of cards from your GY higher than or equal to the Level of the Ritual Monster. Better not expect any Maliss monsters banished from this.

One card from Chaos Origins I would personally highlight because of how underrated it seems to be with the players is Phara the Primordial Goddess. By revealing herself and another Spell/Trap in your hand, that Spell/Trap cannot be responded to until the end of the turn, which is absolutely crazy, as it can make any Spell/Trap match the level of power Super Polymerization has. You will see this mostly be revealed in the Light and Darkness Ritual Deck for the time being as it works with Light and Darkness Ritual, The Fallen and The Virtuous, or a copy of Evenly Matched for board wiping the opponent. She also has two other powerful effects: if she is sent to your GY by a Spell/Trap effect, you can Special Summon her from your GY, and then after this card is Special Summoned from the GY, you can take control of 1 monster your opponent controls with the highest ATK. With the current price of this card, I can definitely see it rising quickly after the format is solved, or when the new Atlantis theme arrives this October in Beyond the Brave.

Normal Summon Aleister… more like Special Summon Aleister. He’s back on the menu with the new Invoked support just released in Chaos Origins, and it also has two new cards released in Beyond the Brave as follow-up support! This new Aleister the Reminiscent lets you target a Spellcaster or a Fusion Monster you control to Special Summon this card from your hand, and that target gains 1000 ATK until the end of this turn. This card’s Summon effect can banish 1 Invoked monster from your Extra Deck to let you add 1 Invocation, or a Spell that mentions it, from your Deck to your hand, accessing you to plenty of powerful Spell Cards of either… Invocation or Invocation – “Sword”. With this new support, you can access Invoked Caliga faster to floodgate the opponent or summon the new Invoked Oceanus to floodgate the… Who makes these cards that are simple to summon floodgates? There is also the new Hyperinvoked Aeon, which, at its Fusion Summon, can banish cards from the field and/or GYs up to the number of monsters used as materials for this card’s Fusion Summon. But if you used 3 or more materials, you can look at your opponent’s Extra Deck to banish up to 3 cards from it… Seriously, why do we keep making these mistakes and rehashing mechanics players don’t find enjoyable? Anyways… The new Invoked support has seen some nice surprises to bring into the format, where it is a major rogue contender, either run as a pure Deck or with both Fairy Tail and Magistus.

This weekend will show who is the best of the best between North America, Europe, and Oceania with their World Championship Qualifiers. From Light and Darkness Ritual being projected to the Deck to beat, followed by Branded and Kewl Tune. We could see a triple win for these Decks, or even have a completely off-the-wall Deck win, like last year with Mitsurugi Orcust. To everyone who is attending the WCQs in their respective regions, I wish you the best of luck, and may the best duelist win!

Edited and co-written by Angryjon