Yu Gi Oh Advent Calendar

Konami has announced its 2019 Advent Calendar, which will arrive in September and feature lots of versions of Kuriboh:

Konami Digital Entertainment Inc, is proud to bring you this year’s version of the newly designed and sized Advent Calendar.  Coming this holiday season, the Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Advent Calendar returns to honor the old-time tradition of counting down the days to Christmas, in a way fit for a Duelist!

This year’s Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Advent Calendar is more compact and double-sided, with 12 doors on each side, but still packed to the brim full of holiday-themed cards to add to your collection and power up your Decks.

Kuriboh has shown off many forms since its first release back in 2002, appearing in all generations of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime.  This year’s Advent Calendar features Kuriboh in many of its most popular forms.  The special alternate art winking Winged Kuriboh and even a brand-new “Performapal” Kuriboh monster will both be included and featured on the packaging!

Each Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Advent Calendar contains:

17 Super Rares 7 Ultra Rares

***Here is a review of some of the notable changes made to this year’s calendar:

• Size is smaller: this year we are making it double sided, so 12 slots on one side, and 12 more slots on the other side
• Exclusive content: there’s a new card that is exclusive to this item, plus a promo card that hasn’t been printed in years

Yu Gi Oh Gold Sarcophagus

Konami Digital Entertainment Inc, is proud to bring you one of the most exciting, new look tin we have produced in quite a few years!  The 2019 Gold Sarcophagus Tin is fashioned after the iconic Gold Sarcophagus and is designed to reduce the amount of wear and tear sustained by the cards you keep in it, making it a stylish and efficient way to store cards that are important to you!

Each tin will come with 5 Prismatic Secret Rare variant cards:

• 2 cards (from a set of 6 new cards) with art by Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of Yu-Gi-Oh!

• 2 cards (from a set of 5 cards) from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! animated series, which includes the 3 Egyptian God Cards with art by Kazuki Takahashi.

• 1 of 3 new World Premiere cards designed to be usable in any Deck, and help you stage a comeback against some of the fastest strategies that might come from your opponent.  One card prevents Graveyard dumping, another punishes your opponent if they Summoned too many monsters, and the third gives you a reprieve if they set up a monstrously large field on their first turn.

In addition, each tin has 3 Mega-Packs of a specially crafted set featuring popular cards released in 2018, like Danger!? Tsuchinoko!?, Knightmare Mermaid, andCalled by the Grave. Each 16-card Mega-Pack has 12 Commons, 1 Rare, 1 Super Rare, 1 Ultra Rare, and 1 Prismatic Secret Rare.  All of the foil cards in these Mega-Packs appear in different rarities than their original 2018 release, adding a further element of mystery and excitement to the 2019 Gold Sarcophagus Tin!

Let me summarize what might be one of the most compelling tins produced in quite some time:

• Brand New Tin design fashioned off the Gold Sarcophagus!
• Blind Purchase of 5 card Prismatic Secret Rare Variant card which promotes Multiple Purchases!
• Prismatic Secret Rare is not commonly used!
• Includes Kazuki Takahasi art cards (creator of Yu-Gi-Oh!)
• Includes World Premier cards that are useable in any deck!
• New foil rarities for Mega-Pack cards, rather than just a reprint of their original rarity!

Yu Gi Oh Set

From Konami:

Konami Digital Entertainment Inc, is proud to bring you the latest booster Battles of Legend: Hero’s Revenge.  This 1^st edition set arrives on the scene in July, ready to turn the summer on its head!  This 93-card, all-foil booster set is packed with never-before-released cards from previous Yu-Gi-Oh! anime and manga series coming to the Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME for the first time, new Link Monsters, high-powered tournament mainstays, and more!  Here’s a taste of what’s in store for Duelists:

• Number 93: Utopia Kaiser, originally available only to those who reached the pinnacle of competition, makes its public debut! Fans of “Number” monsters will have even more to look forward to in Battles of Legend: Hero’s Revenge.

• More “Vision HERO” monsters from the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX manga series appear, along with related “HERO” cards like Vision HERO Vyon.

• Brand-new Link Monsters for a variety of Deck themes like PSY-Frames, Traptrix, Black Luster Soldier, and more.

• In-demand tournament-level cards like Borrelsword Dragon and Sky Striker Mobilize – Engage!

• Popular tournament-level cards available as foils for the first time, like Dinowrestler Pankratops, Artifact Lancea, and Summon Limit.

Each 5-card pack contains 4 Ultra Rares and 1 Secret Rare.

Set contents subject to change.*         `

Speed Dueling Decks

Just received the following info on the new Speed Dueling Decks coming for Yu Gi Oh this fall:

The Speed Duel Starter Decks each contain 3 ready-to-duel Speed Duel Decks and 3 Ultra Rare variant cards specially chosen to boost each strategy.  Speed Duel Starter Decks: Destiny Masters contains Decks for the Millennium Item users Yami Yugi, Ishizu Ishtar and Maximillion Pegasus to face off against up-and-comers from Speed Duel Starter Decks: Duelists of Tomorrow containing Decks for Seto Kaiba, Mai Valentine and Joey Wheeler.

Also included are brand-new Skill Cards to change Deck-building decisions and flip the tables on your opponents!  Some Skills come right out ofYu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, but as a bonus, each Deck contains a brand new original Skill for their respective characters!

All cards in the Speed Duel Starter Decks contain a new marker confirming their legality for Speed Dueling.  Only cards with this special symbol may be used for Speed Dueling*, however players are free to Duel with Speed Dueling cards in regular Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME tournaments and events.**

Speed Dueling is a great way to get a taste of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME while also providing compelling new gameplay options for existing fans.  Keep an eye out on the Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME events page to find out where you can play Speed Dueling events!

Speed Duel Starter Decks: Destiny Masters contains: 1 20-Card Yami Yugi Deck 1 20-Card Ishizu Ishtar Deck 1 20-Card Pegasus Deck 9 Skill Cards (3 for Yugi, 3 for Ishizu and 3 for Pegasus) 3 Ultra Rare variant cards

Speed Duel Starter Decks: Duelists of Tomorrow contains: 1 20-Card Seto Kaiba Deck 1 20-Card Mai Valentine Deck 1 23-Card Joey Wheeler Deck 9 Skill Cards (3 for Kaiba, 3 for Mai and 3 for Joey) 3 Ultra Rare variant cards

*To use a card in Speed Dueling it must have the Speed Dueling Symbol on the card, other versions of the same card are not legal.

**Skill cards may only be used in Speed Dueling events.

Dark Souls Reprint

Just received the following email from Konami

Dear Official Tournament Stores,

 

As many of you have experienced recently there have been overwhelming requests for the recently released Dark Saviors Special booster from retailers and players alike.  Since its release, the ability of our players to obtain the desired cards coupled with the escalating cost to do so, has left them a bit frustrated with the limited available inventory that currently exists.  In an effort to remedy this situation and satisfy the player base we will be releasing an unlimited version of this product in mid-July.  The product will be extremely limited in number.

Lost Art and Mordenkainen

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at Konami's recent Lost Art Promotion and the recently announced Mordenkainen's Tomb of Foes

New Yu Gi OH

Konami Digital Entertainment Inc. is proud to bring you the newest product offering, Circuit Break Special Edition which is jam-packed with value!  Not only does it include 3 booster packs of Circuit Break, each box is guaranteed 1 of 2 Super Rare variant cards, as well as 1 of 2 Super Rare preview cards of non-foil cards from the upcoming Spring 2018 booster set!

Marionettes that move on their own, a mad scientist, and vengeful spirits returning to walk the earth are just the beginning of what you’ll find in Circuit Break!  This booster is also home to more Link Monsters, including Borreload Dragon, a terrifying new 3000 ATK monster that can brainwash monsters it attacks, giving you control over them until their minds burn out.  Famous monsters from history like Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys and Levia-Dragon - Daedalus return in powerful and unpredictable phantasmal forms as the new Metaphys Nephthys and Metaphys Daedalus. Enforce order on their chaos and you’ll unlock a cycle of creation and destruction that will only stop with your opponent’s defeat!

They went into hiding after Maximum Crisis, but now SPYRAL and the Subterrors have returned with Link Monsters to update their strategies for a new era of Dueling!  Summon Subterror Behemoth Fiendess, a “Subterror” Link Monster that can hit the field with up to 4400 ATK, gets your best Flip monsters out of your Deck, and then Summons them! Guess what kind of card is on top of your opponent’s Deck (make sure to peek first with SPYRAL GEAR – Drone) and the new “SPYRAL” Link Monster SPYRAL Double Helix can Summon any “SPYRAL” monster from your Deck.  Of course, it also counts as SPYRAL Super Agent on the field and in the Graveyard, so you can use all your “SPYRAL GEAR” cards with it!

Powerful cards that can go in any Deck! Circuit Break has a wide variety of cards that let you do some incredible things no matter what kind of strategy you want to employ.  There are also new cards and Deck themes from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS!  You can watch each episode of the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! series soon after it finishes airing in Japan on http://www.crunchyroll.com/ and then pick up great cards from the new series in Circuit Break! (Simulcast currently available every Wednesday in the US and Latin America).

Each Circuit Break Special Edition contains: 3 Circuit Break booster packs, 1 of 2 Super Rare variant cards, either The Winged Dragon of Ra - Sphere Mode or Stardust Chronicle Spark Dragon, and 1 of 2 Super Rare preview cards from the Spring 2018 booster set.

New Yu Gi Oh Set

Here is information on the next Yu Gi Oh set, Duelist Saga, releasing on March 30 at Official Tournament Stores, like our's:

Konami Digital Entertainment Inc. is proud to bring you this exciting new product offering, Duelist Saga.  As the Duelists of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V begin their journey across dimensions, step back and look at the entire history of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise with Duelist Saga, a special set featuring new cards from all five incarnations of Yu-Gi-Oh!  The 40 new cards in Duelist Saga are a mix of cards from the manga series, the animated series, and cards inspired by some of the coolest monsters and concepts from each series.  Some of the new things you can look forward to include:

·         New cards used by Mai and Bakura in the original series, including the often-requested Diabound Kernel from Bakura’s Duel against Kaiba.

·         The power to unleash any of the Sacred Beasts from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX in any Deck and draw an extra 2 cards per turn if you do!

·         Yusei’s secret ace Synchro Monster whose existence was revealed in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, but was never called to action in our timeline.

·         The terrifying influence of Don Thousand, the ultimate foe from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL!

·         Perform death-defying Dueling feats and get rewarded with extra draws every time you do with a card that brings the excitement of Yuya’s “Dueltainer” style of Dueling from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V.

·         Brand new “attack” Spells! Spells like Dark Magic Attack that represent the signature moves of famous monsters have always been a hit with fans, and more are on the way in Duelist Saga covering monsters from every series.

Because these new cards come from every era of Yu-Gi-Oh! they work with other cards from every era of Yu-Gi-Oh! as well.  They also enhance Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, and Pendulum Summoning strategies, so these cards go great with High-Speed Riders, Wing Raiders, Dragons of Legend -Unleashed-, Destiny Soldiers, and Fusion Enforcers.

Duelist Saga also has 60 more cards that span the entirety of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s history, featuring memorable cards from the various series, the tournament scene from each era of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and sometimes both!  Each Duelist Saga box contains 3 mini-packs with 5 cards each, for a total of 15 cards.  Appearing for the first time in Duelist Saga, all cards in the set use an all-new, all-different Ultra Rare technology, and each mini-pack will contain 3 of the 40 new cards and 2 of the classic cards for a total of 15 cards per box: 9 new, and 6 classic!

Why No Sneak Peeks?

We have had a couple of people inquire as to why the store has not hosted the last couple of Yu Gi Oh Sneak Peeks. The answer is due to Konami policy.

In order to qualify to host a Sneak Peek, as well as other special Konami events, such as Yu Gi Oh Day, Konami requires stores to host at least one sanctioned tournament per month for the preceding quarter. If a store does not meet this requirement, it loses the opportunity to host Sneek Peeks until such time as it meets the requirement again.

We have not had turnout for our weekly tournaments which are scheduled at noon on Saturday. We tried moving them to Tuesday nights for a period to accommodate players, who said that was a better night for them to show up but after a couple of weeks, those players stopped showing up as well.

It is quite simple. In order for us to host special events like Sneak Peeks, we need duelists to show up and participate in the weekly tournaments, for which we charge $5.   We can run them for free if players would like but then we would only give out one pack of cards to the overall winner. Let us know if you would like this option. Be that as it may, until we have at least 4 players show up for a tournament once per month, Konami will not offer a Sneak Peek to players at the store.

Rivals of the Pharaoh

The September 15 release of Rivals of the Pharaoh promises some pretty spectacular cards for Yu Gi Oh:

Konami Digital Entertainment Inc, is proud to bring you the latest product solicitation, Duelist Pack: Rivals of the Pharaoh.  The greatest Duelists attract the most fearsome foes, and the legendary Pharaoh is no exception! Duelist Pack: Rivals of the Pharaoh is packed with cards used by and inspired by the Pharaoh’s toughest opponents and their most exhilarating Duels from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! animated series.

Sometimes a friend, more often an enemy, billionaire Duelist extraordinaire Seto Kaiba pushed the Pharaoh to his limits from the very first episode.  His Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon’s signature move, Neutron Blast, is now a Spell Card that lets your own Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon attack 3 times in a turn – once for each head – without interruption! Duelists can also use knowledge of their own greatest rivals to their advantage with Lullaby of Obedience, a one-of-a-kind Spell Card that lets you play any monster you can name from your opponent’s Deck!

When the dust settled on the Battle City Tournament, it became apparent that Yugi’s mild-mannered schoolmate Bakura, possessed by the evil spirit of the Millennium Ring, was the Pharaoh’s true enemy all along. Fans have been requesting Bakura’s Dark Sanctuary Field Spell for over a decade, and now it’s finally here! While Dark Sanctuary is in play, every attack your opponent makes has a 50% chance of backfiring completely and damaging your opponent, plus you can also use your Monster Zones to complete the Destiny Board’s terrifying message and win the Duel automatically!

To free the Pharaoh’s soul from eternal imprisonment in the Millennium Puzzle, Yugi had to defeat him in one climactic Duel in Egypt. Yugi’s Silent Swordsman and Silent Magician monsters from that Duel represented his own personal growth throughout the original series, and now, 10 years later, those monsters have grown up too! These new monsters can shush Spell Cards while their Attack Points grow and grow throughout the Duel, eventually becoming strong enough to take down even the toughest monsters Dueling has to offer.

Last but certainly not least, you’ll even find cards used by Maximillion Pegasus and Marik Ishtar, the Pharaoh’s final opponents from Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, respectively.

Duelist Pack: Rivals of the Pharaoh contains 11 brand-new cards, and 46 cards in all: 24 Commons, 10 Rares, 6 Super Rares, and 6 Ultra Rares.

Fall Yu Gi Oh Tins

Konami, never one to spare the hype, announces the release of this years MEGA TINS (Can you feel the excitement/)

Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc is proud to bring you once again our flagship release of the 2016 Mega Tins!  Paving the way for next year’s Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions feature film, this year’s 2016 Mega-Tins put the original Duelists, Yugi and Kaiba, front and center alongside their legendary Egyptian God Cards. Slifer the Sky Dragon (Yugi’s Egyptian God Card) and Obelisk the Tormentor (Kaiba’s Egyptian God Card) have been two of the most popular monsters since their debut in season 2 of the original animated series.  Now they’re bigger than ever on the enormous 2016 Mega-Tins!

The Yugi & Slifer Tin and the Kaiba & Obelisk Tin each come with 6 variant cards – the highest number of variant cards we’ve ever included in a tin before!  In addition to the Secret Rare Egyptian God Card depicted on the lid, each tin includes 2 Ultra Rare variant cards of Yugi/Kaiba themed cards, including Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes White Dragon, in their Ultra Rare foil technology (a combo not available since their first appearance in the 2002 Yugi & Kaiba Starter Decks).

Each tin also includes 3 Super Rare variant cards, including 2 brand new cards – one Pendulum Monster, and one D/D/D boss monster to go with the Pendulum Domination Structure Deck,tentatively scheduled for next year.

As always, each Tin also comes with booster packs for players to open up and get even more cards. The 2016 Mega-Tins Mega-Packs contain popular cards from 2015-2016 booster setsCrossed Souls, Clash of Rebellions, Dimension of Chaos, and Breakers of Shadow!

Each 2016 Mega-Tin is sold separately.

The Yugi & Slifer Mega-Tin comes with:

· 3 x 16-card Mega-Packs. Each Mega-Pack contains 1 Secret Rare, 1 Ultra Rare, 1 Super Rare, 1 Rare and 12 Common cards, including cards from the following booster sets: Crossed Souls,Clash of Rebellions, Dimension of Chaos, and Breakers of Shadow

· 1 Secret Rare Slifer the Sky Dragon (tournament-legal version)

· 2 Ultra Rare variant cards, including Dark Magician

· 3 Super Rare variant cards

The Kaiba & Obelisk Mega-Tin comes with:

· 3 x 16-card Mega-Packs. Each Mega-Pack contains 1 Secret Rare, 1 Ultra Rare, 1 Super Rare, 1 Rare and 12 Common cards, including cards from the following booster sets: Crossed Souls,Clash of Rebellions, Dimension of Chaos, and Breakers of Shadow

· 1 Secret Rare Obelisk the Tormentor (tournament-legal version)

· 2 Ultra Rare variant cards, including Blue-Eyes White Dragon

· 3 Super Rare variant cards

Yu Gi Oh Deck Promotion

Konami has launched a promotion for schools whereby they receive a coupon for a free Yu Gi Oh deck. They bring the coupon to local stores and the store gives them a deck from their stock. Retailers then contact Konami and get sent a replacement deck from Konami stock. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that stores will receive the same deck or even a recent deck. From the working of the promotion, stores will get whatever deck Konami has on hand, which means a deck that was not particularly sought after as the popular decks are already sold out.

Yu Gi Oh Crossed Souls Pricing

Crossed Souls has proven one of the weaker releases for Yu Gi Oh in recent memory. We went pretty lightly on orders and still did not sell one single pack the day it came out. Players have shown little interest in single cards from the  set and we have easily sold more commons from other sets than we have from Crossed Souls. Collectors have not sought the rarer cards from the set, at least not to the point where prices have gone up significantly. In fact, checking a couple of card pricewebsites shows no Crossed Souls cards increasing significantly in value while several, including Clear Wing Syncro Dragon and Order of Zerfa, have dropped over 50% in value just in the past week.

However, the greatest, to my mind, indication of the weakness and lack of interest in Crossed Souls is the price of a booster display on the interwebs, which despite all of the problems associated with them, do a very good job of assessing the market value of a product. A display of Crossed Souls has a retail value of $96 (24 packs at $4 per pack). Usually, one can find booster displays at significant discounts to that as box flippers or stores that overbought seek to unload excess product. However, you don’t usually find full displays selling at a 44% discount to retail value less than a week after release. I easily found a number of sellers offering displays of Crossed Souls at prices ranging from $54 to $58 per display. That’s a huge price cut for less than a week after release.

Konami Konfuses Yet Again

Next weekend is the Sneak Peek for the new Yu Gi Oh release, Crossed Souls (which is rather a cool name for anything, much less a card set). Also on that same weekend, though, is the latest Konami sponsored Demo Day for Yu Gi Oh.

 For those not familiar with Konami Demo Days, they are designed to encourage current players to bring in a new player by offering a play mat and a bonus to the new player.  It doesn’t usually work that way in practice since Yu Gi Oh play groups are pretty limited and not great about recruiting fresh players. What’s strange about the choice of marketing strategy here is running two marquee events on the same day. 

 Generally what this produces is what marketers call cannibalization. The traffic that the Sneak Peek generates is the same traffic that the Demo Day event would pull in. You are not creating new traffic or pulling people  in on a different day. Instead, Konami is spending perfectly good money to pull people in to the Demo Day that would have come in for the Sneak Peek, blunting the effect of both events on one day and forgoing the opportunity to use one as a draw for another day. Maybe Konami has a subtle marketing plan here but I don’t see it.

Sneak Peeks Vs. Pre-releases: And the Winner Is....

I’ve said it before and I will say it again:  while both make me money, I much prefer WOTC’s Magic Pre-releases to a Yu Gi Oh Sneak Peek (Still waiting to get approved for Pokemon Pre-releases and Wizkids keeps having to push back their scheduled release dates to the point that scheduling a pre-release for any of their games is problematic. The last time we tried running a release tournament for a HeroClix product, we found out a week ahead of time that the date of the release had moved back a week. Sigh.). We ran a Sneak Peek for the Yu Gi Oh Secrets of Eternity last weekend and are wrapping up a Pre-release weekend for  the new Magic set, Fate Reforged, as I write this.

There are two major reasons I prefer a WOTC event to a Konami one:

1)      More flexibility in running the event.  I can understand some of Konami’s concerns regarding running tournaments, since they generally perceive as they company generally perceives the game as targeting younger players (most Yu Gi Oh players that play here and in other stores with which I am familiar are high school age and up), but having to run events between during certain times of the day excludes the possibility of a midnight release for a new set as well as running evening events. Additionally, Konami wants stores to submit 3 photographs of each event, get the ages of players as well as their sex and poll them as to their favorite and least favorite cards. WOTC does not ask for any of that. Running a pre-release is hectic enough as it is without the additional headache of asking questions of players regarding age and card likes during the event.

2)      More profitability in running the event. Konami sets a $20 limit that stores can charge for the Sneak Peek and the only prizes provided are the promo card and playmats. If a store wants to give out additional prizes, and over time tournament prizing has conditioned players to expect additional prizing at a pre-release event. Ergo, if a store wants to offer additional prizes, the store has to foot the cost and cannot charge anything extra to cover the cost of the additional prizes. Any more prizes provided come directly out of the store’s gross, making the Sneak Peek much less profitable for stores to run. Contrast this with WOTC, which provides displays of boosters at no charge for stores to use as prizing for the event AND allows stores to charge whatever they way, rather than mandating a specific fee. Unlike Konami, WOTC appears to realize that  pre-releases are highly competitive events, meaning that competition will work to keep the fees stores charge for pre-releases within a certain competitive range, generally within the $20 to $30 dollar range, though I did hear of stores going as cheap as $15 for a Fate Reforged event