This didn't surprise me...

"Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En"

http://www.konami.com/yugioh/blog/?p=5172

Well, there's the top 32 deck lists from YCS Dallas. As expected, Six Samurai totally dominated the playing field.

Here are the to 32 decks.

[1] Anti-Summon
[9] Blackwing
[3] X-Saber
[1] Plant Synchro
[12] Six Samurai
[2] Machina Gadget
[1] Infernity
[1] Monarch
[1] Lightsworn
[1] Gravekeeper's

Alistar Albans' Anti-Summon deck looks viable, and I'm sure his recent top will verify that. It's interesting how he dropped the Gadgets from the standard Anti-Meta line up. I can assume that he encountered difficulties when it came to speed, hence lack of Gadgets. I'm liking "Mind Crush" mained a lot. The ability to cripple searches is becoming increasingly important, so I'm surprised more people aren't maining it these days. Additionally, it aids greatly in defense against obvious "Blackwing - Kalut the Moon Shadow" plays. Kudos to you Alistar.

I've also noticed the surge of Blackwing decks in the metagame. I have no idea what has caused this, but I have reason to believe this may be short lived. Fair enough, Blackwings are a good deck in their own right, but I don't fully grasp why they held such a large percentage of top 32. Correct me if I'm wrong, but "Pot of Duality" may be the reason for this. Considering how prolific "Pot of Duality" is in Japan right now, I have a logical reason to conclude that it may be hit, even if it is only a semi-limit. Of course, that is down to interpretation and I could be mistaken.

Astonishingly, X-Sabers and Plant Synchro decks failed to hold a large chunk of the top 32. This may be due to Samurai dominance, or simply down to lack of popularity. The same could be said for Gravekeeper's.

The most bizarre Infernity deck saw some success, managing to get in to top 32. Congratulations, Weston Lundgren, for your success with a dying archetype. I will most likely analyze his build at a later date. The most astonishing thing about his build is the extraordinarily high monster count. Whilst most Infernity builds and variants are minimalist with their monster line-ups, Weston went all out maining a whopping 19 monsters (as opposed to the normal 15). He clearly favors aggression (as evident from maining 3 copies of "Trap Stun"), which seems to be the only way to survive the relentless onslaught from the Legendary Six Samurai. Though I do not approve of the methods used, I still feel huge congratulations are in order for Weston from the entire Infernity community.

Brandon Ogbonna succeeded in topping with Lightsworn, a deck that was supposedly crippled back in 2009. His monster line up isn't anything phenomenal, but his trap line up is. Brandon used a more commonplace trap line up instead of the typical 3 "Royal Decree". This may have been the cause of his success and I most certainly wish to probe further into his reasoning behind his traps.

The only Gravekeeper's deck that managed to top belongs to Traviis Messengale. This does show that the surprise factor utilized by Gravekeeper's at previous is no longer present, and different play styles may be needed for this deck to function. Regardless, Gravekeeper's are still a threat and need to be treated as such.


That's it for this relatively short post. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I want to improve this blog as much as possible, so please leave a comment below with your thoughts on either YCS Dallas or the presentation of this blog.

Wishing you a good day,

~Valafar123