[MW] Ride the Typhoon of the Radiant Market

The wizardry of the new format has future consequences.

This recent week in Yu-Gi-Oh! has been thriving with news from a new TCG Forbidden & Limited List changing the format on February 2nd, TCG fully revealing Burst Protocol, Blazing Dominion officially releasing in the OCG, and a new Revolution Booster set coming out to support Toons, Unchained, and Witchcrafters. So let’s dive into the changes this week and see what players have been paying/giving attention to.

Follow the Radiant Winds of the Typhoons

With Radiant Typhoon receiving new support to make it a contender in the Meta, players have been picking up their copies of Radiant Typhoon Krosea as it is one of the key monsters in the Deck. With well over 1700 sales in the past 3 months on TCGplayer, it is no doubt that players are ready for YCS Richmond, which is happening from February 13th to 15th. Krosea is an important card to the Radiant Typhoon strategy because if a Quick-Play Spell Card is activated, you can Special Summon Krosea from your hand after it resolves. And if Krosea is Normal or Special Summoned, you can add any other Radiant Typhoon card, or 1 Mystical Space Typhoon, from your Deck and/or GY to your hand, but you are locked into WIND monsters for the rest of the turn. Being one of your many play starters or extenders, nearly every list I’ve looked at has it as a 3-of because of how much power this card has behind it.

Along with Radiant Typhoon Krosea, Noble Knight’s Shield-Bearer has finally caught on in the market for players of the Deck as another starter. This card from Brothers of Legend has massive potential since you can banish it from your hand or field to add any Level 6 or lower WIND Beast monster from your Deck to your hand, which is perfect for adding the copy of Radiant Typhoon Eldam to start your plays. This ties into the Deck perfectly, as getting to Eldam lets you add any other Radiant Typhoon monster, or 1 Mystical Space Typhoon, from your Deck to your hand, and the best two to search for are Radiant Typhoon Swen or Krosea itself. The upside to Eldam is if you have a Mystical Space Typhoon, or your opponent controls no Spell/Traps, you can Special Summon Eldam from your hand, which can be useful if you used your Normal Summon for Shield-Bearer, but also great as you can lead with this card so you don’t have to use your Normal Summon immediately.

A staple you will find in most lists in the future will be The Fallen & The Virtuous Spell Card from the self-named Chronicle Deck, The Fallen & The Virtuous. This card is going up for numerous reasons, and now with Burst Protocol finally releasing in the TCG soon, it has been making moves on the market for all three versions. This card has been impactful for many Decks from Dracotail to Sky Striker. And now? It is about to be more insane with the additions of Ecclesia and the Dark Dragon and Fallen of the White Dragon. It has been proven time and time again that this card has the power, and it’s waiting to be unleashed because of the two effects it houses. Being always treated as both a Branded and Dogmatika card is a good start, since it makes it heavily searchable/settable from Albion the Branded Dragon, and when you activate this card, you can use 1 of its effects. Firstly, you can send 1 monster that mentions Fallen of Albaz from your Extra Deck to the GY to target 1 face-up card on the field and destroy it. Secondly, if you have an Ecclesia monster in your field/GY, you can target and Special Summon 1 monster from either GY. This makes both sides of this card have powerful interruptions. You can send Albion the Branded Dragon to the GY to Set any Branded Spell/Trap Card from the Deck to the field or set up Rindbrumm the Striking Dragon to target a copy of Fallen of Albaz in the GY to Special Summon either Albaz or Rindbrumm and banish the other. Having another forced interruption can come in handy in order to Fusion Summon Mirrorjade the Iceblade Dragon. But if you send Ecclesia and the Dark Dragon, you can target 1 Level 8 Fusion Monster in your GY/banishment along with 1 card on the field and shuffle both cards back into the Deck for, again, another piece of removal.

Radiant Typhoon will only get stronger from here and is a Deck to consider testing against if you want to be ready for any upcoming events in the future, especially with the addition of the Forbidden Crown in Burst Protocol as well.

Rising Popularity through the Brush

On the new Forbidden & Limited list, we saw both K9-66a Jokul and “A Case for K9” receiving a Limitation in the format; this has caused K9-04 Noroi to rise in price as a way to replace copies of what was lost from both cards. It is another card from Doom of Dimension that has been rising up in price, and for good reasons, as if it is Normal Summoned, Noroi can Special Summon 1 non-Machine K9 monster from your Deck, but you cannot Special Summon monsters from the Extra Deck, except K9 monsters, which is fine as you will overlay what you Summon into K9-17 “Ripper”, then search for any K9 card from your Deck to your hand by detaching 1 material. With Noroi, it has an additional bonus that you can send 1 card you control to look at your opponent’s hand, see what the opponent is on, and see what other interactions they have for your turn. Also, if your opponent has 2 or more cards in their hand, you can Normal Summon Noroi without Tributing so you can fulfill more going first.

Along with K9 receiving Limits, Vanquish Soul Hollie Sue was also recently Limited for the Vanquish Soul K9 strategy, but there was a trade-off by allowing both Stake Your Soul! and Vanquish Soul Razen to go back to 3. This is a huge boost to the Vanquish Soul Deck itself, as it gained 2 of its best starters back to full power, whereas Hollie Sue was used sometimes when Razen was Limited for the past few months. With the addition of 2 more copies of Razen to your list, you can now Normal/Special Summon it to search for any of your non-Warrior Vanquish Soul monsters more reliably and have additional FIRE monsters in your Deck, so the Rescue-ACE engine is needed less now. By revealing a FIRE monster, Razen cannot be destroyed by card effects this turn, but the better effect is when you reveal a FIRE and DARK monster to destroy all other monsters in Razen’s column, which is a great piece of removal for the Deck. Seeing both Vanquish Soul and K9 receive changes on the list really curved the Deck in a way that you rely on the VS cards more in your list, to where the K9 cards add additional coverage where VS misses out on.

Next up is a powerful contender for the next format, and that is Lunalight. Being a great Deck that can compete against both Radiant Typhoon and Branded Dracotail, this could be the meta call going into the YCS 300 events. With this happening, Lunalight Gold Leo has spiked up in price, going over double its price at the start of the month as one of the main monsters in the strategy. If Gold Leo is Normal or Special Summoned, you can add 1 other Lunalight monster from your Deck to the hand, then you discard 1 card afterwards, which is great for discarding cards like Lunalight Silver Hound or Yellow Marten, which will trigger their effects to search for more Lunalight cards. The upside to this discard is if a Lunalight monster(s) is sent to your GY while Gold Leo is in the Monster Zone, you can target 1 of them and add it back to your hand, which is great for recycling cards like Lunalight Black Sheep or a sent Lunalight Kaleido Chick.

With the changing of the formats in less than a week, it’ll be interesting to see how it develops and corrects itself in the coming weeks as more players will be shifting to Vanquish Soul K9, Lunalight, and Branded Dracotail soon.

Looking into the Magical World of Illusions, Devilish Lies, and Sorcery

Over the past few days, the OCG has revealed a new Revolution Booster set that will be giving support to three iconic themes: Toons, Unchained, and Witchcrafters, and due to this announcement, plenty of cards spiked. So let’s take a look at what has happened. The first stop is Toon Dark Magician, which, on the North American market, has less than 65 listings total over its 5 printings between TCG and Speed Duel, and it is slowly being cleared off the market. Being one of the vital cards of the Deck, this card lets you discard 1 Toon card to either Special Summon 1 other Toon monster from your Deck, ignoring its Summoning conditions, or add 1 Toon Spell/Trap from your Deck to your hand, like Toon Table of Contents, Toon Bookmark, or even Toon Kingdom.

And flipping through the pages, Toon Table of Contents has hit a staggering $2 for every copy here in North America, with each copy having less than 55 listings total. This card can add 1 Toon card from your Deck to your hand, and unlike most searcher cards in the game, this does not exclude itself. This in turn results in absurd Deck thinning and multiple Spell Card activations. It is great for past formats to use in Exodia FTK with Royal Magical Library, in Sky Striker to place additional Spell Cards in your GY for the additional effects of your Sky Striker Spells, and even searching for Toon Cannon Soldier for the Danger! Dark World FTK that appeared in 2018. I suspect this might be one of the cards that will see an Over Frame print in the OCG, as it is one of the vital overall searchers for the Deck.

On the block for the Unchained side of the set, Unchained Soul Lord of Yama has seen a recent spike due to the announcement, as this powerful Link-2 monster from Duelist Nexus has become a huge focal point for any Fiend strategy. On its Special Summon, this card can add any Unchained monster from your Deck or GY to the hand, letting you access Unchained Twins – Aruha or Unchained Soul of Sharvara for extending your plays. If a card(s) you control is destroyed by battle or card effect while Yama is in your GY, you can banish Yama to Special Summon any Fiend from your hand or GY, and then you can destroy 1 card you control. This means you can destroy any of your Unchained Spells or Traps to Special Summon 1 Unchained monster from your Deck.

There isn’t much to talk about currently for Unchained, as a majority of their cards are cheap, so we will take a look at the duo that always gets bought out from Witchcrafter. So welcome in Witchcrafter Madame Verre, a boss monster of the Witchcrafter Deck, as during damage calculation, if your Spellcaster monster battles an opponent’s monster, you can reveal any number of Spells with different names in your hand to make that Spellcaster monster gain 1000 ATK/DEF per each card revealed. This can swing the game in your favor if the opponent is only expecting you to reveal 1 card, as revealing more than 2 can cause issues. This is because you can quickly discard 1 Spell to negate the effects of all face-up monsters your opponent currently controls until the end of that turn. Having a way to blanket negate the opponent is another worry the opponent has to deal with on top of that ATK/DEF gain effect.

Finally, we have Witchcrafter Creation, and this is a searcher card like Toon Table of Contents, but not as absurd, as it can only search for any Witchcrafter monster from your Deck to your hand, letting you access any of your low-Level Witchcrafter monsters. All the lower-Level monsters let you quickly discard 1 Spell to Special Summon 1 Witchcrafter monster from your Deck as a recruitment-style effect. If you Special Summon Witchcrafter Haine, she can protect your other Spellcasters from being targeted, and you can quickly discard 1 Spell to target and destroy 1 face-up card your opponent controls. Adding Witchcrafter Golem Aruru with Creation isn’t a bad idea either, as when your opponent activates a card or effect that targets a Spellcaster(s) you control or targets one for an attack too, you can quickly target 1 card your opponent controls or a Witchcrafter Spell in the GY to Special Summon Golem Aruru from your hand and return the targeted card to the hand. However, during the opponent’s Standby Phase, Golem Aruru is returned to your hand.

This has been a week that was jam-packed with excitement for the future of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and even though it caused a longer article than normal, I wanted to cover more due to the hype that has been created through the recent week. Hopefully, the duelists who are going to be participating in this weekend’s Latin American Remote Duel YCS have a great time ending off the format in style, as starting February 2nd, the new format will be applied going into the Burst Protocol competitive season.

Edited and co-written by Angryjon

Some trivia and facts were noted through Yugipedia in this article.