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The Maestro has entered the building.

The new competitive season is going to be starting this weekend, and players have been picking up cards for past formats, Genesys, and the Advanced formats. From looking into the past for prices to looking towards the future of the game, this week’s Market Watch will be extremely interesting for breaking down some cards that players have been picking up these past few weeks. This week will be a tad shorter, since the last article was longer than expected, so expect some cool cards that will be talked about in the article for next week.

Old Format Gems To Dig For

Any format with Pulling the Rug being legal is great, since in Edison format and many formats prior, players opt to run multiples of this card just to combat Monarchs or other monsters whose effects activate upon their Normal Summon, as this card can negate and destroy those kinds of monsters. This card has been seeing niche use even in the Genesys format, as it is currently unpointed and is a great Side Deck card against Tellarknights, Sacred Beasts, and Invoked if needed. All copies demand a high price for Lightly Played and Near Mint, and the last time it saw a reprint was in 2023, during the peak of when Konami ran massive Time Wizard format events at their YCS and WCQ events.

It seems that I’ve been slacking on covering Darklord cards as The Sanctified Darklord has been seeing plenty of sales over the past months and is slowly dwindling in price. It was only printed once back in 2018 via Flames of Destruction. This card sends 1 Darklord monster from your hand or face-up field to the GY to negate the effects of 1 Effect Monster on the field, and if you do, you gain LP equal to that monster’s ATK. Being able to copy this card with your Darklord monsters is crazy since it gives you two free monster negates on demand. Hopefully, this card does see a reprint in the coming months, as it would be perfect to see a rarity upgrade in either Magnificent Monsters or Magnificent Maestros in the future.

Ashtra is forming hype around the Labrynth community, as many have tried out the new Beyond the Brave archetype with Labrynth itself. This newfound hype has caused Welcome Labrynth to see plenty of sales over the past weeks as Ashtra is centered around manipulating face-down cards and using their Tuner Trap Monsters to Synchro Summon during the opponent’s turn. The Main Deck monsters can be Special Summoned from your hand by revealing 1 face-down card you control in order to return that face-down card to the hand or Extra Deck. Labrynth allows this new theme to gain access to Levels 1 to 4 and 6 to 8, letting you do any Synchro Summon of monsters among Levels 1 to 9. It’s unknown how well this will do in the future for the game, but it is a major Deck that players are testing out before Beyond the Brave releases in the TCG.

Beyond the Brave and past formats have been interesting to watch over the weeks to see what has been happening in the OCG and testing from many of the players in the community. Seeing the formats from 2013-2016 doing well is a great sight as players are exploring possibilities of what could’ve been done those years ago.

New Techs For The Future

With Magnificent Monsters fast approaching the TCG this September, players are starting to pick up copies of both Dragunity Knight – Luin and Dragunity Lord – Georgius, all thanks to the new Crystron Halqifibrax Prism. Halqifixbrax Prism is a brand-new Link-3 monster that, if Link Summoned, can Special Summon any Tuner Monster from your Extra Deck with a level equal to or less than the total original levels of monsters used as Link Material. This allows you to Special Summon a copy of Dragunity Knight – Luin from your Extra Deck if you used materials that equal Level 6 or more, and you can Link away both Luin and Halqifibrax Prism to Link Summon the Dragunity Lord – Georgius. This triggers the effect of Luin to target and equip itself to 1 Dragunity monster you control since Luin was sent from the field to the GY.

This combo is great, as while Dragunity Lord – Georgius is equipped with a Dragunity card, your opponent cannot activate the effects of monsters in the GY. If Georgius is Link Summoned, or if the opponent Special Summons a monster, you can Special Summon any Level 5 or higher Dragunity monster from your Extra Deck or GY, which could be useful in some situations to Summon out Dragunity Knight – Trident in order to rip up to 3 cards out of the opponent’s Extra Deck or bring out Dragunity Knight – Areadbhair to negate an opponent’s monster effect and banish that monster. The other upside that Georgius has is that when your opponent activates a Spell/Trap or effect, you can quickly send 1 Equip Card you control to the GY to negate that effect, thus giving more interruptions for whatever Deck will play this combo in the future.

Finally, we will look at a tech that almost every Rank 4 Deck will be using as of Magnificent Maestros this fall with the advent of Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon, Four Heavenly Dragons releasing in this set as one of the many Grandmaster Rares, which also comes in Overframe and Ultra Rare. This card is especially perfect if you can Special Summon 2 Level 4 DARK monsters to your field regularly. Why is this card important to keep an eye on? Well, this card can quickly detach 1 material from itself to Special Summon 1 Rank 4 DARK Xyz Monster from your Extra Deck using this card as material, and you transfer the materials to the new Xyz Monster. This has caused Evilswarm Ophion to get bought out heavily since yesterday, and being able to stop the Special Summoning of Level 5 or higher monsters while Ophion has materials makes this card great against Light and Darkness Ritual, Fydralius Harmonia, and Elfnote. This has mainly seen play in the new Toon Deck the OCG received from Revolution Booster -Toons/Witchcrafter/Unchained- thanks to Funny Dark Rabbit and Dark-Eyes Illusionist Faceless Mage. It also sees play in Ryzeal Mitsurugi because of all the Mitsurugi monsters being DARK, Umbral Horror (which will be released this October in Beyond the Brave), and Rokket as they are full of Level 4 DARK monsters.

The next months for Yu-Gi-Oh! are looking really interesting with releases as big changes are coming. We’ve seen the impact of both Limit Over Collection: The Heroes and The Rivals over the past 4-5 months as it changed the climates of many Meta Decks that can use the cards. Since Magnificent Monsters is extremely allocated and a limited number of packs have been made, it’s safe to assume that Magnificent Maestros will follow the same path.

Edited and co-written by Angryjon