Bolt SpiderAs the market shifts, plenty of cards have been in the spotlight for the community as techs for upcoming Advanced Format Decks, current engines, past formats, and the Genesys format. Plenty of innovations have been going on, and it's been nice to see them now with the new Forbidden & Limited List being in effect. But just before Beyond the Brave hits shelves within the next week, let’s take a look at this week in a small snapshot of a few of the cards that have noticeable trends as of recent. So let’s not waste any more time and dive into this week’s Market Watch.
The Divination of the Ancients
The ancient powers of Divine Dragon Knight Felgrand have sprouted in the Genesys format as Sacred Beast, Jurrac Snake-Eye Fire King, and Light and Darkness Ritual Decks have been using a copy of this card in their Extra Deck due to the powerful interaction it holds in the format. Divine Dragon Knight Felgrand requires 2 Level 8 monsters as material, and once during either player's turn, you can detach 1 material from this card to target and negate 1 face-up monster on the field, but that target is also unaffected by other card effects this turn. Mainly used for the monster negation, it can also help when attacking into problematic monsters, or if the opponent has a massive removal effect like Evenly Matched, Dark Hole, or Raigeki. This can save the most important monster in your field by making it a tower-like monster.
Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity finally came off the Forbidden & Limited List, and this has caused Wind-Up Rat to shoot up in price. It is a simple but powerful card that allows you to target a Wind-Up monster in your GY and Special Summon it from your GY in Defense Position, but also your copy of Rat has been wound-up and is changed to Defense Position. Being one of the major parts of the Wind-Up Hand Loop, this card is always played at 3 copies per Deck as it is a Soft Once-Per-Turn per copy, as you can loop the effect as much as you can, as long as you can summon a new copy in Attack Position and have enough resources to continue the loops Wind-Ups can do.
It's always nice to see collectable items on the market, especially with an alternate artwork that has yet to see a reprint, like for Five-Headed Dragon. This alternate art was released in Battles of Legend: Hero's Revenge and hasn’t seen the light of day since, outside of the Rush Duel release for it from their Burst Rex of Awakening set. Being one of the many Fusion Monsters you would run with Future Fusion in the Chaos Dragon Deck, it just lets you send any 5 Dragon monsters from your Deck to your GY, and then two turns later, you can Summon the almighty Five-Headed Dragon if the Future Fusion wasn’t destroyed by then. While on the field, it cannot be destroyed by battle with a DARK, EARTH, WATER, FIRE, or WIND monster, but most of the time, you use Chaos Sorcerer or Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning’s banishing effect to get rid of it, or destroy it with Torrential Tribute or Smashing Ground.
With Dark Magical Curtain being played in plenty of pile Decks at the current moment, some players have opted to use Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer for its Continuous Effect, which stops your opponent from banishing anything in either GY. This is useful against the Light and Darkness Ritual Deck if they try to use their Light and Darkness Ritual, as they would be forced to Tribute monsters from their hand and/or field, which costs them important resources, or even against WANTED: Seeker of the Sinful Spoils’s GY effect, which would’ve banished itself to place a Sinful Spoil card on the bottom of the Deck and let you draw 1 card. This is also extremely useful against rogue Decks like Invoked, Maliss, and even Orcust since they want to banish cards from their GY for advantage, interruptions, or recursion.
Plenty of techs are going around, and we could see more within the next few weeks post-Beyond the Brave as the meta shapes up more until the advent of Toons releasing in Magnificent Maestros this November.
Heroes of A New Age
Synchron has been eyed by the players for the Angelechy, Elfnote, and some Kewl Tune strategies, as Synchron can replace cards that were lost in the recent Forbidden & Limited List for the time being. This has caused Junk Meister to rise in price, as it's the center point of the Synchron engine with Starjunk Synchron and Junk Signal. You can reveal a Warrior or Stardust Synchro Monster in your Extra Deck to Special Summon this card from your hand, but you’re locked into Synchro Summoning for the rest of the turn. Upon this card’s Normal or Special Summon, you can add any other Junk card from your Deck to your hand. Along with that, you can target 1 Junk monster you control to reduce its Level by up to 2, which is extremely useful for Synchro Summoning anything between Level 5 and 7. Most of the time, you will search for Junk Armor, which can Special Summon itself from your hand if it's added from the Deck or GY to the hand, and you can Tribute it to Special Summon a Junk or Synchron monster from your Deck in Defense Position, which gets to your Starjunk Synchron, Jet Synchron, or Stardust Synchron.
With the new Angelechy support being revealed in Beyond the Brave for the TCG, it has sparked tons of debate within the community with the new combinations for playing the Deck. With Mind Castlin, players had other plans of using it in an FTK with Beelze of the Diabolic Dragons to burn away all of your opponent’s LP with Angelechy Destrier. Upon its Synchro Summon, Mind Castlin really doesn’t do much outside of targeting a face-up monster your opponent controls and swapping control of both that monster and this card, but the other effect of this card is the real issue. If Mind Castlin is sent to the GY, and it was previously Synchro Summoned, you can target 1 face-up monster on each field and switch control of those monsters to set up the Beelze FTK Burn Loop. If paired with Scarlight Red Dragon Archfiend, it initiates the first 1000 damage to the opponent, as it’ll destroy Utilimaya Tzolkin, which Summoned the copy of Beelze and Angelechy Seneschal, thus triggering the mandatory effect of Beelze of the Diabolic Dragons to gain ATK when damage is inflicted to the controller of the card. This then triggers the effect of Angelechy Destrier to inflict 500 damage to the opponent, causing the loop to start.
With the new Umbral Horror support only a week away, some players have been picking up copies of Dodododo Warrior for their Decks as it is a general extender in every Rank 4 Deck. This Level 6 Monster can send any Dododo monster from your Deck to your GY in order to Special Summon this card from your hand, and it becomes a Level 4 with 1800 ATK. The main card to send for this card’s effect is Dodododwarf Gogogogloves, as it can Special Summon itself from your GY if you control a Dododo or Gogogo monster, but it is banished when it leaves the field. This will never happen, though, as you will be making a Rank 4 with both this card and Dodododo Warrior.
Finally, there has been some hype running around in both the Genesys and Advanced formats with Dark World, as Dark Corridor has recently seen multiple sales over the past weeks. This is mainly due to a Dark World engine being used to help facilitate some of the plays with the discarding that each Sacred Beast monster has after they search for cards of their respective card types. Raviel searches for a Sacred Beast monster, Hamon searches for a Sacred Beast Spell, and Uria searches for a Sacred Beast Trap. Summoner of the Sacred Beasts, meanwhile, lets you Special Summon any Sacred Beast monster from your hand while also discarding 1 for its effect. Dark Corridor, on the other hand, adds any Dark World monster from your Deck to your hand, then you discard 1 card, which will trigger your Dark World monsters like Grapha (which destroys 1 card the opponent controls), the retrained Reign-Beaux (which adds any Level 5 or higher Dark World monster from your Deck to your hand), Snoww (which searches for any Dark World card from your Deck to your hand), and even Ceruli (which will Special Summon itself to the opponent’s field, to then activate and discard 1 card from the new opponent’s hand).
This upcoming weekend will be a YCS for players to head down to in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and it’ll be hard to tell what will win. With Kewl Tune out of the picture with the banning of Kewl Tune Rotary, it’s only up to both Light and Darkness Ritual and Elfnote to take the crown this time, unless an underdog comes in and snipes the win away from the two best Decks of the format that players are preparing to defeat. Good luck to all Duelists attending this YCS. Then on the 16th to the 18th, we will see a major YCS once again in Houston, Texas, for the first YCS event for the Beyond the Brave format.
Edited and co-written by Angryjon