The first Genesys YCS Main Event is now in the books! Congratulations to Stanley Huang, who won the tournament with a Red Dragon Archfiend Deck! We’re still crunching all the numbers on who played which cards and how many, but while that’s going on, we figured we’d go over the Top 8 strategies and talk about some card choices from each one. If you haven’t seen the Top 8 Decks yet, you can find them here, along with the rest of the Top 32.

Red Dragon Archfiend
Not only was it the winning strategy, a second Red Dragon Archfiend Duelist landed in the Top 4! Players have been experimenting with this Deck since the introduction of Genesys, but it was a bit hit-or-miss before picking up the new cards from Blazing Dominion. Both Top 8 Decks played at least 1 of each of them, including the Crimson Blade Dragon, which they used to pull Chaos Dragon Levianeer out of the Deck.

One key difference between the two Top 8 Decks is that the winning list includes 2 copies of Earthbound Prisoner Stone Sweeper. These can act like extra copies of any of the Resonators or Red Lotus King, Flame Crime. That last one is important because it’s an easy Special Summon that can send Red Reign to the GY for you to pick back up when you Synchro Summon a DARK Dragon Synchro Monster. Having easy access to Red Reign frees you from the temptation to play Gravity Collapse – a card that’s much more suited to Decks that incidentally place a Synchro on the field, like Clown Crew, than an actual dedicated Synchro Deck that wants their ace monster on the field doing things. Both players used Flame Crime, but only the winner included Red Reign.

Radiant Typhoon
It wasn’t shocking to see Edwin Strom in the Top 8 again after his strong finish at the Proto-YCS in Richmond, but it was surprising that the pairings worked out to put him in a mirror match in Top 8 against the eventual runner-up, William Wesley!

It’s interesting to see the difference between how these two Duelists decided to spend their points. Edwin prioritized direct search power, running all 3 copies of Radiant Typhoon Chant and only 1 Radiant Typhoon Vision as well as doubling up on Radiant Typhoon Eldam while William did it the other way around, valuing the draw power of Vision and running only 1 Chant and 1 Eldam. They also differed on which splashy non-engine cards they wanted to spend points on. Edwin could wait for opponents to overcommit, then blast them with Shiina, Twin Tempests of Celestial Thunder, while William could hit specific choke points to close off the path to victory with Dominus Purge.

Regenesis Voiceless Voice
Back in March, fans of Voiceless Voice got a small discount on their key Spell, Barrier of the Voiceless Voice, and Zackoria Louis was able to cash in right away with a Top 4 finish in Columbus! This list takes inspiration from the old Regenesis Vanquish Soul Decks, adding Royal Archfiend to grab Regenesis Archfiend to access the rest of that theme, but it also goes one step further including a full complement of Dark Spirit’s Mastery to fetch the Archfiend. Two key “Voiceless Voice” monsters, Saffira and Skull Guardian, have 2500 ATK or DEF so they help you run both sides of the strategy.

There’s also a heavy emphasis on cards that help with going second. Illusion Gate was everywhere in this event and many players, including Zackoria, went so far as to Main Deck it. Dark Spirit’s Mastery could also fetch a Main Decked copy of Lava Golem. But the unique defensive feature of this Deck was the inclusion of Dogmatika Fleurdelis, the Thunderbolt, which could drop on “turn 0,” Set Dogmatika Punishment from the Deck, and make it legal to activate that very same turn. And wouldn’t you know, Fleurdelis’ ATK and DEF are both 2500!

Mimighoul
The biggest enemy of Mimighoul in Genesys has been the round timer! The strategy is sound and strong, but it often has trouble closing games, especially when opponents are unfamiliar with its game. Daniel Nguyen took matters into his own hands (and into the Top 8) with a version of the Deck that can take opponents out in a flash if they let their guard down for a second, courtesy of a card we’d wager most of the players in the tournament had never heard of before: Life Hack!

Life Hack is an odd combat trick that debuted 2 years ago in Battles of Legend: Terminal Revenge. It makes it very easy for one of your monsters to beat your opponent’s best monster, but very difficult for you to win the Duel on the same turn you use it…unless you have a monster that can attack directly twice to overcome the half damage effect! Any 2 Level 1 monsters can become Lyrilusc – Assembled Nightingale, which can attack directly at will and can attack once for every Xyz Material it has. Target it with Life Hack and it can hit directly twice for half your opponent’s LP each time, defeating them regardless of how much LP they had when Life Hack resolved. Make Nightingale with 3 materials instead of 2, and you can also use the effect to protect it from being destroyed by card effects!

As an opponent, it’s very difficult to simultaneously juggle the powerful control aspects of Mimighoul with the possibility that it can wipe you out at any time, so it’s worth practicing the matchup more heading into the Genesys Championship at the NAWCQ (or picking up the Deck yourself!).

DoomZ
It may be more accurate to call this strategy “Anything GoeZ” given how many extra engines Dwayne Eric Howell (another Top 8 player from Richmond repeating!) packed into his Deck, but if we’re to name it based on its core strategy and the largest external contributor, it would be “Magnet Warrior DoomZ”. The only 60-card Deck of the bunch, this list might look very odd at first glance, but the key to unwinding it is to break the non-“DoomZ” cards down by their function rather than their theme. Take the Sharks and “Seventh” cards for instance. 7 of them represent a Rank 4 Xyz Summon (Ascension, Tachyon, and Surfacing Big Jaws). The last one (Drake Shark) is an engine requirement.

There are 14 Magnet Warrior-related cards, 3 of them are engine requirements, 3 of them are Conduction Warrior Linear Magnum Plus Minus, and then Infernal Punisher, Duoterion, and Magnet Bonding are a search Chain to get Plus Minus. Why go through all the effort to get Plus Minus? Because it Summons itself by sending Epsilon and Sigma Plus to the GY. Sigma Plus then revives Epsilon, which sends Omega Plus to the GY and revives Sigma Plus. That means you have the materials for a Rank 4 and a leftover Level 8 monster you can either use for a Rank 8 later or destroy with Omega Plus to get another Level 4 on the field.

How about Miracle Ejector and the HERO/Neo-Spacian-related cards? The 3 Miracle Ejectors and 3 A Hero Lives are both there to ultimately get Elemental HERO Prisma on the field, either directly or by way of EN Shuffle. Why is Prisma important? Because Medius the Pure is a named Fusion Material of Artmage Diactorus, you can send it to the GY with Prisma then bring it back with its own effect and Special Summon Power Patron DoomZ from your Deck. That means those cards you normally see in HERO Decks represent, you guessed it, a Rank 4!

When you break things down by function rather than theme, it’s a lot easier to see what exactly a Deck is trying to accomplish, and in this case you’ll see that despite being a 60-card Deck, this list is incredibly consistent and efficient and doing what it wants to do.

Kewl Tune
Yuhao Ye is also a repeat Top 8 finisher from Richmond and he played Kewl Tune last time as well, but there were two big questions surrounding the strategy this time: 1. Would anyone bring it over Red Dragon Archfiend or Elfnote? 2. If someone did bring it, would they shell out the points for a copy or 2 of Kewl Tune Rotary?

The answer to 1 was “Yes, but not many.” There were only 5 dedicated Kewl Tune players, but Kewl Tune Cue, Mix, Reco and Synchro were used as an engine in Elfnote and Centur-Ion Decks as well so their individual card play rate is higher than the Deck’s. The answer to 2 was also yes. Yuhao Ye, Top 8 finisher and the only player who made Day 2 with a dedicated Kewl Tune Deck, dropped 40 points on a copy of Kewl Tune Rotary.

The most interesting part of this finish from an overall format perspective is that this is the only Deck using the Heralds that made Top 8. To find the next highest-placed Deck running Heralds, you’ll have to drop down to 21^st place. There were 4 total Decks running the Heralds in the Top 32. Back in March during the celebration events, players were registering Heralds left and right and going to extreme lengths to fit them into their Decks, but at this event, despite their popularity, it turned out that only the Decks that had natural synergy with them produced strong finishes.

Upcoming Point Adjustments
There will be two point adjustments in the next month, one based on the tournament data from March onwards and one for assigning points to the 2 new releases, Battles of Legend: Glorious Gallery and Chaos Origins. We’re working on the data-based one right now. The new cards update will drop on Jun 25^th coinciding with the Chaos Origins Premiere and take effect immediately.

Don’t forget that the Genesys Championships at the WCQs are open events this year, so you can go and play even if you don’t have an invite to the WCQ tournament itself! Day 1 of Genesys is on FRIDAY, so if you do have an invite to the Advanced Format event, you’ll be able to play in Day 1 of both events. You can win a trip to Japan to attend Jump Festa and a whole host of other awesome prizes in the Genesys Championship so if your travel plans allow, give it a shot!