Five Point Preview: YCS Miami

On January 18, 2013 by Kyle Schrader
miami-postPhoto Credit: Steve Whiston

We are less than one month away from the seventh constructed stop of the September 2012 Format on the YCS circuit, which comes to you February 15-17, 2012 from the Airport Convention Center in Miami, Florida. The September format may be winding up, but we still have three Premier events left to play out before our attention turns to the World Qualifiers.

The last Premier event took place in Barcelona, Spain and saw Sweden’s Jack Bruun take home the crown with a variant of Dino Rabbit packing Macro Cosmos. Barcelona was an interesting event, with a very streamlined Top Cut. Rabbit may have won the event, but its share of the format did not increase from Tacoma to Barcelona. The only gains from Tacoma to Barcelona were for Wind-Up and Inzektor: Wind-Up took up 13/32 playoff slots, and Inzektors, which rode a wave of momentum from its Tacoma win, took up 3/32 slots. Meanwhile, all other decks saw their format shares decline. These recent format happenings help us to form our lagging indicators heading into Miami.

Our leading indicators come in the form of new releases since Barcelona: Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL Manga Promotional Cards: Series 2, the booster pack Cosmo Blazer, and Structure Deck: Onslaught of the Fire Kings. The ZEXAL Manga adds another irregularity to the TCG cardpool by adding “Number 50: Blackship of Corn” solely to the North American. Cosmo Blazer brings new support for FIRE Attributes, such as “Pyrorex the Elemental Lord” and the Fire Fist archetype, an XYZ-esque “Scrap Dragon,” in “Diamond Dire Wolf“, and new Mermail support. Finally, the Fire King Structure brings, well, a recurring “Dark Hole” with legs.

Our leading indicators show a lot of new threats entering the format, but our lagging indicators indicate present threats that will not be going away – so which five should you be the most worried about heading into YCS Miami? An honourable mention goes out to those that did not make the cut: Fire Fist, Inzektor, Machine-variants, Dark World, Chain Burn, and Gravekeeper.

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