Duelists are always looking for an edge over the competition – here’s some of the ways we’re seeing that happen at YCS Houston.

Sales Ban

Over the last few events, we’ve seen a rise in Starliege Photon Blast Dragon in Ryzeal Decks. This monster prevents Ryzeal Detonator from being targeted, and Detonator can then protect the Starliege from destruction. Many typical interactive cards like Metaltronus can’t get through to the Detonator in this situation, so some Duelists have begun using Sales Ban! This allows you to turn off Detonator’s… er, detonating effect. Now you don’t care if it’s protected by Starliege, as you can make your plays right in its face.

Besides Detonator, Sales Ban is flexible enough to answer anything – as long as it’s not an important card in your own Deck. That makes it feel ok if you draw it at inopportune times, since you could name something like Nibiru, the Primal Being to play through it.

Mischief of the Gnomes

An older Trap Card has made a resurgence in Kaihuang Zhang’s Labrynth Deck: Mischief of the Gnomes! This card modifies the Levels of all monsters in each player’s hand, completely dismantling the average Ryzeal Duelist’s plan. It’ll also cause trouble for Synchro Decks like White Forest.

As a Normal Trap, Mischief plays well with Arias the Labrynth Butler and the rest of the Labrynth cards. Most importantly, even on the opponent’s first turn, Mischief can be discarded with the furniture cards like Labrynth Chandraglier! That gives you some surprise interaction when going second, without being a dead draw besides that. Zhang used this trick in his Round 7 Feature Match.

Artifact Lancea and Seventh Tachyon

Maliss is easily one of the strongest Decks of the last few months, with some incredible options. It also has some incredible weaknesses – its heavy reliance on banishment to use Maliss effects. Duelists have been counteracting this Deck the same way as before, with Artifact Lancea and Chaos Hunter to shut them down entirely.

Those aren’t particularly new, but what is new is the adoption of Seventh Tachyon to find these cards more consistently. You can use Seventh Tachyon to reveal Number C102: Archfiend Seraph to add Artifact Lancea to your hand, or you can reveal something like Number 104: Masquerade to get Ext Ryzeal when that’s more important.

Crossout Designator

We’re seeing more usage of Crossout Designator as a pinpoint answer. For example, a Duelist might have just a single copy of Nibiru, the Primal Being in their Deck with the intention of banishing it with Crossout Designator.

With Ryzeal more and more popular, you can also use Crossout Designator in the mirror Match to negate your opponent’s cards. It doesn’t hurt you to negate your own Main Deck Ryzeal monsters when it’s your opponent’s turn, after all. Ryzeal are already suited to playing more silver bullets for Crossout Designator anyway, since the actual Ryzeal core is small enough to fit extra cards.

Going Second Cards

We’re seeing more Duelists leaning into cards for going second, with the intent to break their opponent’s setup. In particular, there’s a lot more Evenly Matched and Lightning Storm than we had at TEAM YCS Las Vegas. Most Duelists will still prefer to go first, but now there’s more cards on the rise that they need to think about.