YCS Bologna was our first chance to see how European Duelists tackled Genesys! Today we’ll talk about the differences in Europe’s first Qualifiers and the Invitational itself compared to YCS Pittsburgh.

Differences in Qualification
The Bologna qualifiers were run a little differently than they were at the NA and LATAM YCS events. In Bologna, qualifiers were held on Friday before the event began, so strong Duelists that normally would be competing in the Main Event all day Saturday had a chance to qualify and have a tournament to fall back on for Sunday if they failed to make it through Day 1. As such, the format for the Invitational Qualifiers was shifted as well from single elimination to essentially double elimination Swiss. You still needed to win 3 to get in, but it was “Win 3 of 4” instead of “Win 3 in a row”.

This could have resulted in an Invitational with over 64 players, but it was done to take into account the possibility of many qualifiers not showing up on Sunday due to still being in the Main Event. Indeed, there were Duelists who qualified on Friday and then performed extremely well in the Main Event, leading to them skipping the Invitational.

Differences in Deck Selection
Why did we bring that up? Because being able to lose 1 and still qualify does change the equation a bit on what sort of Decks you can qualify with. Four Decks that had never qualified before (Infernoble Knights, Unchained Archfiend, Heraldic Beasts, and Lunalight) made the field in Bologna.

Lunalight is a Deck that’s specifically been considered strong and difficult to fight against once it gets going, but it’s struggled mightily in straight single elimination events. Under the modified qualifier rules, 4 Lunalight Decks made it in. Three of them were one-and-dones in the Invitational, but the 4^th went all the way and won the tournament!

Something to think about as we move forward is that the current Invitational format is going to be retired in the new year and replaced with the same format used in the YCS events as Genesys moves out of early access and gets plugged into our standard tournament systems. This will affect the tournament viability (or lack thereof) of certain Decks, and we’ll be taking it into account moving forward.

Any Extreme Outliers?
The Deck that lost the most ground was Artmage, which had grown its share from Anaheim to Pittsburgh, then dropped off heavily in Bologna. Instead, two Decks reached “outlier” status with more than double the showing of Lunalight in the Invitational: Dracotail and Radiant Typhoon Runick.

Dracotail operates as a high-power Shaddoll-style Deck, and in some cases even includes Shaddolls. You Fusion Summon and the monsters you fuse together activate their effects in the Graveyard to give you more cards. Of course, it’s much faster than Shaddoll Decks used to be, with Dracotail Faimena letting you start fusing from the first Main Phase of the game – even if it’s not your turn! The “Dracotail” Spell/Trap Cards you get for fusing your monsters are very strong, and in particular Dracotail Flame is so strong that it escaped containment and became a generic card used in many Decks, especially Side Decks.

Unlike the standard Radiant Typhoon Decks, Radiant Typhoon Runick has an excess of removal, draw, and search power, and almost all those extra cards are Quick-Plays that also attack the opponent’s Main Deck. It’s a Deck that often never has to attack at all and just waits for the opponent to Deck out, while defending with powerful Xyz Monsters and randomly sniping key cards from the top of the Deck.

We think it’s fine to have a Deck in the format that’s analogous to the old Needle Worm deck-out Decks, but this particular combination where you get to play 2 entire Decks that are individually good enough to win on their own, at the same time, has become so widespread that neither main engine will be completely free after the next update.

Any Extreme (Card Usage) Outliers?
In Pittsburgh, there was only 1 card that was used in 30% or more of all Decks submitted for the Qualifiers: Droll & Lock Bird. In fact, 54% of all possible copies of it were registered in the Qualifiers, though we should note that this number treats the players who enter multiple qualifiers with the same Deck List as a unique player each time. Looking at how many copies were in the Invitational itself, where the players were actually unique, 63% of all the possible copies were played.

This may sound low if you’re used to looking at Master Duel or Advanced Format trends, but for Genesys where there’s a cost to including it, that’s a ton. Speaking just as 1 person on the Genesys team, I’d consider anything over 33% for a generic card to be an outlier and take a look into whether it’s that way because it’s specifically countering a Deck trend or because it’s outperforming its salary. For Droll, the answer is probably both, which makes the Bologna Invitational numbers shocking: Only 35% of the maximum number were registered!

Which Advanced Format Forbidden Cards Were Popular?
There were only 4 Advanced Format Forbidden cards used in the Bologna Invitational. Two players decided to use both Pot of Greed and Mirage of Nightmare in their Deck. One player opted to play a pair of Heavy Storm, and one player ran a copy of Number 86: Heroic Champion – Rhongomyniad.

When Is The Next Update?
We were planning to line it up with the release of Phantom Revenge, as there are some cards in that set that proactively attack the Main/Extra Deck. We’re going to take the NA release delay of PHRE as an opportunity to take some extra time for this update and also prepare a “What to Expect” article for it. We’re shooting for the 15^th for the next update, but we’ll let you know in the “What to Expect” article if that changes.