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The market aftershock of YCS Columbus

With YCS Columbus coming to a close this past weekend and with all the Battles of Legend: Glorious Gallery sponsored openings happening yesterday, a wild time has fallen upon the community as new cards from both Blazing Dominion and the upcoming Battles of Legend: Glorious Gallery are arriving. Plenty of cards spiked due to the influences from this weekend, such as Solemn Accusation and Illusion Gate, to even some sales on Gizmek Uka, the Festive Fox of Fecundity. But let us not waste any more time and get right into this week’s Market Watch.

Top Cards From YCS Columbus

One of the top techs that players used in their Side Decks this weekend was Solemn Accusation, the newest Solemn Counter Trap in their arsenal. This card can be activated when a Spell/Trap is activated, and you can either pay 1500 LP to negate the activation of that Spell/Trap, destroy it, and make it so neither player can use cards with the same original name as that destroyed card for the rest of that turn or pay 3000 LP to negate and banish that card as well as cards from your opponent’s hand or Deck with the same original name as that card. This card has an additional bonus as well, since you can activate it the turn you Set it, by revealing 1 other face-down Trap you control. This was impressive to see it being used as players were using it against Kewl Tune Synchro, The Fallen & The Virtuous, and Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage! To stop the opponent dead in their tracks.

Branded is on the table as one of the best Decks in the format, and this caused one of their main starters to rise back up in price, Fallen of the White Dragon. You can send 1 monster that mentions Fallen of Albaz from your Extra Deck to your GY to Special Summon Fallen of the White Dragon from your hand. If it is Normal or Special Summoned, this card can Special Summon 1 Ecclesia monster from your hand, Deck, or GY to set up follow-up plays with Dogmatika Ecclesia, the Virtuous, or go into Synchro plays with Incredible Ecclesia, the Virtuous. This card has seen play in tons of topping lists from Branded itself, Elfnote, Centur-Ion, future Decks like Ritual of Light and Darkness (YGOrganization translation), and even Jesse Kotton’s 1st place Branded Dracotail deck list. This card will be the center of attention for the future, and only time will tell when it will see its first reprint.

An extremely popular card from this weekend was the powerful board breaker, Illusion Gate. This card can destroy as many monsters your opponent controls as possible by paying half your LP, and then you can Special Summon 1 monster from the opponent’s GY to your field, ignoring its Summoning conditions. The downside is you can only apply this effect once per Duel, which can be considered a double-edged sword if you decide to run more than 1 copy of this card.

Power Patron has taken over the TCG with many different versions, and this has also caused Shade the Obscure to rise in price, as it is a semi-replacement of the Forbidden Heavymetalfoes Electrumite. While in the Pendulum Zone, you cannot Pendulum Summon except Pendulum Monsters, and if a monster(s) with 1000 or less ATK is Special Summoned, you can return this card to the hand. You can also Special Summon this card from your hand if you have a monster in your Pendulum Zone, which is great for extending into a Link Summon or for Xyz Summoning a Rank 4. The other effect this card has is you can pay 1000 LP to destroy a Pendulum Monster Card in your hand or face-up field to then add 1 Pendulum Monster from your Deck to your face-up Extra Deck. This card helps accelerate the combos in Power Patron as they trigger one of their many effects if they are added to the Extra Deck.

YCS Columbus, Ohio, showed off all the amazing ideas players had for their Deck building and I wish I could cover more techs that were played here, but there are way too many to even consider for the future.

Rising Market Stars

There have been a few rising stars in the market recently, but we’re starting off to talk about Gravekeeper’s Watcher, as this card saw a 1st place finish in MMJ’s Kewl Tune Side Deck. This card can be discarded from your hand when your opponent activates a monster effect or Spell/Trap that could make them discard when it resolves. This was mainly used against Mind Shuffle or the new Sacred Beast cards from Chaos Origins, as they discard on resolution, so this card could be used. In all honesty, it’s a niche tech that can be helpful in certain situations, but cards like Ash Blossom & Joyous Springs or Droll & Lock Bird would be more beneficial.

The new Shaddoll cards were finally revealed, and Infernoid Evil has shipped itself out off the market. It is one of the best cards for the Deck now thanks to Lev Shaddoll Fusion, as that card can send 1 Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck to your GY, which lets you send a copy of Infernoid Evil. This then triggers Inferoid Evil, which lets you add 1 Void Spell/Trap from your Deck to your hand, including the new Void Unleashing Spell Card. This card lets you reveal 1 Shaddoll card in your hand to then add 2 Shaddoll cards, each with different types (Monster, Spell, or Trap) from the card you revealed, and then you discard 1 card. This card can also banish itself from your GY to add an Infernoid monster from your Deck or GY to your hand, which allows you to resend that copy of Infernoid Evil on a following turn.

A card that has been rising in the format and in price happens to be Mulcharmy Fuwalos once again. This card’s play rate has gone up since the start of this format to 92.5%, as being able to draw 1 card each time your opponent Special Summons a monster from the Deck/Extra Deck is extremely potent. The drawback is you cannot control any cards to use them, and at the End Phase, you shuffle cards back into your Deck until you have an equal amount of cards, +6, in your hand to your opponent’s field. This will be a card that everyone runs as long as it remains legal in the TCG, but hopefully soon it receives a new reprint to drop the price again.

Even though it has only been a week, Dominus Spark has taken off, effectively spiking over 30% its price on release over the weekend, where vendors were selling them at $100 a copy. Since it has settled down, players have realized how much power this card holds. This card can be activated from your hand if your opponent activated a monster effect in the hand or GY. When activated, this card can target 1 monster your opponent controls to banish it, but if you don’t have a Trap in your GY, your opponent can Special Summon 1 monster from their hand. The drawback for this card is if it was activated from the hand, you cannot activate the effects of monsters that aren’t LIGHT, DARK, or DIVINE, which is perfect for plenty of meta Decks currently. This card has seen plenty of play over the past weekends in Maliss, Branded, White Forest, and even Azamina Orcust. It has cemented itself as a staple in the current metagame to come.

Finally, Gizmek Uka, the Festive Fox of Fecundity, saw a top from YCS Columbus as a tech in Alex Mondalk’s Top 32 R.B. Sky Striker list. This card previously saw play specifically to counter Crystron Halqifibrax years ago, as you would use Uka’s effect to Special Summon it from your hand if a monster is Special Summoned from the Main Deck. While this card is face-up on the field, each time your opponent Normal or Special Summons a monster, you inflict 300 damage to them. And finally, if Uka is Normal or Special Summoned, you can target a face-up monster your opponent controls and Special Summon 1 monster from your Deck that has an Attribute that matches that target’s and whose ATK equals its DEF. This was great for Special Summoning Barrier Statue of the Torrents, but you can also run Consecrated Light to stop DARK monsters from being Normal or Special Summoned or to prevent the existing ones on the field from declaring attacks. Consecrated Light also could not be destroyed by battle with a DARK monster. Another option that could be used is Knight Corruptor Iblee in order to stop most Summoning mechanics once it is Linked away from your field, which would trigger its effect to Special Summon it from the GY to the opponent’s field.

Overall, the format for Blazing Dominion is about to end, as we will see the release of Battles of Legend: Glorious Gallery in the coming week as players prepare to pick up cards from the set and test out forgotten strategies as well. Outside of a few Regionals and maybe some National Events this weekend, it’ll be interesting to see how things change for the future, and hopefully some new meta shifts happen once again.

Edited and co-written by Angryjon