Konami introduces Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel side events at YCS events

Ahead of the Remote Duel Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series event this weekend, Konami, the creators of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game have announced that for the first time, the physical card game and online card game will be having events under the same umbrella. At this weekend’s YCS event, players will be able to play in official side events using their Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel accounts. The event runs on all day on Saturday, February 26 and Sunday, February 27. The event will be held entirely online with more information being provided by Konami on its official website.

These Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel tournaments will run all weekend long and cost players $13 to enter. For entering, players will receive three physical booster packs and a promo card of Amabie. For winning a Master Duel side event tournament, players will receive a Master Duel Mouse Pad as additional prizes. The Master Duel Mouse Pad features the Master Duel logo as well as a depiction of one of the game’s mascots, Rescue Rabbit. These tournaments are small four to eight-player pods that will fire at will when enough players sign up.

Another interesting bit of information regarding these events are the format. Each Master Duel match will be best two out of three with 50-minute rounds and the tournament will be single-elimination. But the most important part is the introduction of “side decking”. Side decking is an important part of the physical card game. But in Master Duel, there is no side deck function. The side deck is used to hold cards that are able to counter opposing players strategies which is important in a diverse metagame. In these side event tournaments, Konami is implementing a workaround. Instead of having a set 15 card side deck like the physical game, in between games in a match, players are able to use any card in their collection as their side deck. This may be problematic as players can simply swap decks since there is no limit to the side deck.

This means that as long as players have the same deck they enter with during Game 1 of a match, they can completely swap strategies in Game’s 2 and 3 if wanted or needed.