YCS Austin, TX Top 32 deck breakdown

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Will The Seal of Orichalcos define the september 2012 format?

Most of you will be aware, that in Konami’s latest Legendary Collection, entitled ‘Yugi’s World’, they have finally decided to release the extremely powerful Seal Of Orichalcos, which was what season 4 of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime was centered upon.

http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/products/legendary_coll3.html

The set looks pretty good so far, but what seems to be getting everyone talking is the effect of the seal. So far, Konami has released the following:

The Seal of Orichalcos is a Field Spell card with three key powers:
1. Gives all your monsters +500 Attack Points.
2. Highly resistant to removal from the field.
3. Allows your stronger monsters to protect your weaker ones.

Each box of Legendary Collection 3: Yugi’s World comes with a Seal of Orichalcos of your very own, with all three of these powers – and it’s 100% tournament legal!

Even though we have no official offect, what’s been released so far makes t he card seem incredibly devastating. For a start off, it basically acts as a necrovalley for non gravekeepers; in the sense it gives all your monsters a 500 boost. This would mean that slower decks, like Gadgets, are pumping out high attack gadgets instead of weaker ones, and would also mean big beaters such as Thunder King Rai-Oh became even tougher to get rid of. This could potentially mean cards that alter ATK points such as  Shrink, became absulute must-haves in any competitive deck.  Additionally, just the fact that it gives ALL monsters an attack bonus, means decks typically focusing on lower ATK/lower level monsters have enough offensive strength to become more competitive.

Secondly,  it’s stated to be ‘Highly resistant to removal’. This is a rather vague statement, but it’s likely to mean that in some way it cannot be destroyed or removed from the field.  I doubt this will simply mean something like ‘This card cannot be destroyed by your opponent’s spell or trap cards’, since Highly Resistant gives me the impression the user will be able to pay some sort of cost to avoid it being destroye, banished etc. For example, it may be possible to pa lifepoints to avoid it being targeted by card effects that turn.

Assuming it is going to be genuinely hard to  remove, and that what Konami has said isn’t just marketing hype, it’s certainly possible Malefics or even Earthbound Immortals might become more competitive next format due to this card. A 4500 ATK malefic cyber dragon that doesn’t need skill drain to keep it on the field isn’t something to laugh at by any means. Another thing to consider is how easy it would be to play this card. Since it’s a field spell, Terraforming can search it out, and there are other support cards for field spells that could be viable in the right deck.
And finally, we have the third effect, that you can protect your weaker monsters with your stronger ones. This sounds like it will be similar to the effect of Legendary Six Samurai – Shi En, in the sense that if your weaker monsters would be destroyed, it’s possible you are able to switch the target to a stronger one.  This would be terrifying in the right deck, and could make a weaker ATK card like Spirit Reaper become almost invincible.

How would you stop it?

Assuming this card IS so good that it creates entire decks built around it, if it’s as hard to destroy as it’s made out to be, it’s not going to be easy to get rid of. The best side-deck option for this would be Closed Forest.

This card would essentially stop Seal being played, until your opponent used a card effect to get rid of it, and  then waited a turn to play it. And since adding a new field card to remove the old one isn’t classed as destroying it or targetting it, there’d be very little your opponent could do to stop it. Regular field spells would also work, such as Necrovalley or The Gates of Dark World, as they’d replace seal, however they are vunerable to replacement or destruction much more so than Closed Forest is.

Hopefully, this card won’t be as batshit as it’s currently being hyped to be, but it might be an idea to start hoarding Closed Forests just in case, as (unless reprinted) that card will surely rocket in price next format.