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YCS Newsletter – Bochum 2018

YCS Bochum was a fantastic start to 2018 for competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! 1957 players attended making it the largest European Event we have ever seen. It is also the first European YCS following the February update to the Forbidden and Limited List. The list has been met with fantastic feedback from players and attendance to all events such as local and regional levels are seeing fantastic turnouts.

After 11 rounds of swiss and the top cut, Marco Perico of Italy won the event with World Chalice. This shocked many as it was not seen as a meta deck and that other decks were stronger. This has had a dramatic impact on what cards people are looking to obtain.

Top 32 Deck Breakdown:

• Pendulum Magician – 9
• True Draco – 5
• Trickstar – 4
• Lightsworn Zombie Grass – 2
• Invoked Mekk-Knight – 2
• Pendulum FTK – 2
• Dinosaurs – 1
• Paleozoic Frogs – 1
• Other – 6

There were a total of 13 different decks in the top cut. This has been very well received by players that more decks are viable competitively. Pendulum Magician was the most represented deck in the top cut. The fact that Pendulum FTK was less successful which surprised some people, the deck uses some cards in Maximum Crisis to win turn one by using effect damage. Whilst being very strong it is deemed weaker and less consistent than the standard Pendulum Magician build as it can be interrupted with bigger success by hand traps (monsters that can activate from hand in both player’s turns). The most popular of these hand traps have just been announced to be in the upcoming Legendary Collection: Kaiba.

Top 4 Deck Breakdown:

• World Chalice (Winner)
• Pendulum Magician
• Zefra
• True Draco

This is the first YCS in years that 4 different decks made top 4 and has caught the attention of the community.

Deck Explanations:

Pendulum Magician:

Extreme Force provided the deck with an extremely powerful Link Monster in ‘Heavymetalfoes Electrumite’ the deck has remodelled itself using cards such as ‘Chronograph Sorcerer, Astrograph Sorcerer and Abyss Actor – Curtain Raiser’ all of which utilise the effects of Electrumite to gain incredible amounts of advantage. Pendulum Magician has truly become a showcase of the cards from the Arc V era boosted with the mechanics from Vrains.

The 2^nd place list even used ‘Number S0: Utopic ZEXAL’ from the Maximum Crisis Special Edition. Which showed how a well thought out tech card can swing the result of a match to your favour.

If a player is keen to build the deck directing them to ‘Pendulum Evolution’ is the best way as most of the main deck can be found there.

World Chalice:

World Chalice was the shock winner of the event and did not have much representation as many wrongly did not see it as a contender to win. The deck is fully around focusing on the Link Mechanic. Most of the archetype can be found in Code of the Duelist, the winner also used ‘Saryuja Skull Dread’ from Extreme Force turned the tide in game 3 of the final.

True Draco:

True Draco are a very powerful normal summon archetype that appeared in Maximum Crisis they gain advantage very consistently while controlling the opponents side of the field as they summon very powerful monsters that can even be immune to card effects. They can also be tribute summoned using continuous spells and traps.

Zefra

Zefra is a pendulum archetype that appeared in Crossed Souls and Maximum Crisis. Thanks to the very powerful link monsters in Extreme Force the deck can consistently summon monsters and search very strong trap cards that many decks can not match in power.