2013 was 13 years ago. That’s longer than four whole Yu-Gi-Oh! Series!

Well, 13 years of my life I’ve done this now.

13 years of running this site, Yugipedia, their Discord servers, & Spellbook, the Deck builder and browser.
13 years of running DuelingNetwork, advising and consulting on Pojo, DuelistGroundz, the Yu-Gi-Oh! subreddit, TCGplayer, Cardmarket, and Card Pro Magazine.
13 years of Judging multiple YCS, Regionals, and other Yu-Gi-Oh! events.
Suffice to say, after 26 years of playing this game, with now half of that career running YGOrganization; I’m very old.

But being old isn’t an excuse to stop, so as with every year, here are some milestones, and announcements.

First up, during Year 13, we broke 1 BILLION page views between YGOrg and Yugipedia. That’s the last milestone of that magnitude we’re probably ever going to hit and was a dream of mine back around 2019, so a huge thank you to all the staff (and of course, the billion of you who read our work) for their commitment to success and greatness that got us here.

This year we also launched a new segment, the MW (i.e. Market Watch), hosted by Bolt Spider and edited by Angryjon. It’s been wonderful to have them and those have been a very popular segment of articles, so huge shoutouts to them.

Next up, YG4rg, or, YGOrg 4.

We’re finally moving on from the GGRecon-induced skin on this website this month, and opening the new one to you right away. Check out Yu-gi-fourganization and let us know how you feel about the new look and what you think. I personally love the new “cardicles” (card, article) idea that puts the author in the set ID, the tags in the type-line, and their profile pic in the attribute box. Super cool stuff.

Like “YugiTube”?

Check out yugi.tube! Yet another site we’re launching today that lets you filter the abject chaos of YouTube down to just the Yu-Gi-Oh! content from creators across the community. Filter by events, archetypes, languages, formats, content type, and more! There will be plenty of other filters and features added throughout the rest of the year but we hope you like it.

But that’s not all.

After nearly 10 years of people begging me, and 2 years of actually working tirelessly on it, I am finally bringing back DuelingNetwork, but with 10 years of upgrades and quality of life improvements.

That’s right, The Org is making a Sim. …A SimOrg.

Welcome to SimOrg

SimOrg.ca is YGOrganization’s very own Duel Simulator. It’s a manual simulator that allows you to play rated and casual games directly in your browser. TCG Advanced, OCG, Genesys, Speed Duel, Rush Duel, and even formats like 4-player Domain or ranked Goat/Edison (and every other legacy) format ladders exist with enforcement both in joining games and Deck builder search results. You can check it out here.

Format Support

Every format of the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game has its own Duel Room, so you’ll get a 3 lane board for Rush Duel, or a board with a Deck Master Zone and 3 opponents in Domain format. In the Deck builder, simply choose ‘Rush Duel’ from the drop-down menu, and suddenly, all your search results will contain Rush Duel cards only. Building for Edison? Select it from the drop-down menu and watch every card printed after 2010 disappear from the search results. Speed Duel will give you Skill Cards, and Domain format even filters the Deck builder by cards in your Deck Master’s Domain! For more information about Domain format and how it works, please check out https://www.domainformat.com/

Language Support

YGOrganization has always been first and foremost a translation site. With that spirit at heart, we translated every single card in the game, into every single language in the game. This includes PSCT of cards like Shiba-Warrior Taro in Italian, early Japanese texts for TCG World Premieres, and full support in both gameplay and Deck building. Simply go to your profile and select the language you wish to play in, and all of your opponents’ cards will automatically translate into the language of your choice, while the cards you play will translate into their language for them. On your screen, and in the Deck builder, every card will be German (if that’s what you chose), but on your French opponents’ screen, all of their cards (and yours while you’re Dueling them) will be in French. This won’t crowd card search results, as the Deck builder also obeys the language rule strictly, meaning that searching for ‘Blue-Eyes’ while in Spanish mode won’t get you anywhere.

Controls

You can click and drag cards to place them in Zones, send them to the Graveyard, return them to your hand, and so on. Right-click and drag to move the card face-down, including face-down banished cards, or simply to just Set them on the field. We went out of our way to prevent the simulator from coaching players how to play, so for the most part, it’ll let you do illegal plays such as Normal Summoning a Spell Card, but when Setting a monster, we did take the liberty of automatically putting it in Defense mode for you.

Replays

Replays are something we’ve put a lot of work into. You can expect many quality of life updates to these such as the ability to rewind, or jump to specific steps. It’s very nice to link a replay to your friend and ask ‘what would you have done at step 76?’

Audio

We have custom-made sound effects and music for all the in-game Duels and actions. There are more to come to give it some variety as I become able to allocate more budget to this, but please give a huge thanks to the great Fraser Edwards for his phenomenal work on our soundtrack so far. Check out his work at his website, and on his YouTube channel.

There’s so much more to tell, so check out the welcome page and see things like profile personalization, Duel commands and more.

Some FAQs

How do I play/become a Loyalist?
SimOrg is temporarily in early access, open to our Patreon subscribers at https://patreon.com/yugioh, but will be made open to everyone for free before the end of the month.

Do you need/want graphics or CSS? I’m interested!
SimOrg is pretty ugly, especially compared to most modern simulators. It should surprise exactly nobody that I am not an artist, and I am committed, as always, to supporting the artists in our community, rather than using AI to develop things. For this reason, we don’t have a favicon. We don’t have a logo. We don’t have a fancy tombstone image to transparently put over an empty Graveyard box. If you are a graphical artist, or CSS wizard who can make this stuff look fantastic, please reach out via the YGOrganization Discord. I’m excited to hear from you.

Are there Bugs?
Oh there’s probably plenty, but they’re easily fixed when you find ’em. Simply let me know on Discord and we’ll get that fixed up right away.

Can I be a Judge?
Back in the day, Dueling Network was renowned for its staff, most of whom went on to be among the best Judges in the world, even Head-Judging Worlds itself. The commitment to realism the simulator strived for not only made its players better at the game, it made its admins better Judges. SimOrg is returning to those standards after they were abandoned by other successors to that project. The same methodology as back then exists now: pass an exam and an interview, and you’re in. We’re very interested in hearing from you.

Can I ask something else?
Head on over to https://discord.gg/theorganization and ask whatever you like. Our staff are there 24/7 to answer you.

Thank you for reading this, thank you for being a loyal reader for up to 13 years, thank you to all the fans of our work and those who came to me at the NAWCQ this year and helped remind me why I do this, and especially thanks to the Numbers for their 13 years of dedicated volunteer work that have made this dream apart of my life for this long. See you all in anniversary post number 14 next year.