The last few months of the year are holiday season, the traditional time for us to release our Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME Collectible Tins. Even though Summer isn’t here yet, we wanted to give you a first glimpse of what’s to come. (You’ve heard of Christmas in July? Think of this as Christmas in May….)

These will be our 12th annual Tins, and they’re based this year around the four Dragon Rulers introduced in Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy (on sale tomorrow, May 17th!). Each 2013 tin design features one Dragon Ruler on its lid: Redox, Dragon Ruler of Boulders; Tidal, Dragon Ruler of Waterfalls; Blaster, Dragon Ruler of Infernos; or Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms. These avatars of the elements have been tearing it up in tournaments overseas, and are already building a fan base here in North America.

Just like in previous years, the tins will come in two waves. Wave 1 will release at the very end of August, with Wave 2 coming out around November.

These tins provide an opportunity for Duelists to get their hands on FOIL, Secret Rare versions of the Dragon Rulers, for the first time! Each tin comes with a Secret Rare version of the Dragon Ruler shown on the lid. Plus you get an awesome-looking storage tin to carry your decks and cards in. Keep bad mojo away from your cards by encasing them in the protection of a Dragon Ruler!

Also included are 4 Super Rare cards in each tin, reprinting popular cards old and new. One of these cards in each tin is one previously available only as a promotional card to SHONEN JUMP Alpha subscribers or manga readers (different in each tin). The other 3 Super Rare cards are selected from popular cards like Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning and Ally of Justice Catastor.

Finally, each tin includes 5 booster packs of a previous Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG set!

Stay tuned to the official web site this summer as we slowly unveil more cards that will be included in this year’s Collectible Tins!

Want to know a secret?

Battle Pack: Epic Dawn was the best-selling Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG release of 2012.

It took us ten years to finally assemble enough cool cards to make a set that works specifically for sealed pack play. But once it hit the streets, Duelist response was huge.

Just about everybody, everywhere, was picking up Battle Packs for sealed pack play, either at their local tournament store or just at home with some friends. There have also been two sealed pack Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series events (one in Europe, one in North America), and will be more in the future.

So there’s just one problem… how can we possibly top that?

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Over a year has passed since we started adding a ton more details to your Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards, to make your games smoother than ever. Problem-solving card text (PSCT) has put more information at your fingertips, right on the cards where it belongs.

But PSCT is an evolving beast. We’ve incorporated more improvements over the last year, and will be rolling out some more in the next few months. You might have noticed some of these new phrases on your cards already, but if you haven’t, don’t worry. The beauty of PSCT is that it’s inconspicuous. It’s there if you need it, but most of the time for casual Duels you can just play free-form, and only look at the text specifics when you need to resolve a complex card interaction.

Today, we’re going to start going over some important updates to PSCT that you should take some time to digest over the holiday season. It’s also a good time to review the previous PSCT articles HERE.

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Conjunction – What’s Your Function?

Four key conjunctive words and phrases are used on card text, each with a specific meaning:

*Then
*Also
*And if you do
*And Read more…

As long as there have been Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME official tournaments in North America, there have been tournament packs!

Tournament Packs, Champion Packs, and Turbo Packs have all been different names for the same idea: special, 3-card packs that you get when you participate in official events at your local store. (If you’re not playing in tournaments at a local store, you can find one here.)

Let’s take a trip down memory lane….

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Yesterday, we talked about the power of The Seal of Orichalcos to pump up all your monsters by 500 ATK – no matter what their Type or Attribute is.

But we also hit on the idea that this could make all other Field Spell Cards obsolete. It would also make the Seal a guaranteed card in every Deck… and if everybody was playing with The Seal of Orichalcos, that takes the coolness factor down a bit, don’t you think?

We also didn’t want to take Decks that were ALREADY winning, and make The Seal a “win more” card. (“Win more” cards are cards that, in theory, could help anybody, but in practice just help the people who are already winning.) If The Seal was able to give additional strength to the Xyz-heavy, Synchro-heavy, and Special-Summon-spam Decks that are all the rage these days, it would just drive independent Decks further underground. But what if, instead, we could use The Seal to give a boost to those independent Decks, instead? Read more…