Happy New Years!🥳🥳🥳

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It’s Enishi here to bring you the YGO Newpaper 2020 rewind edition. First, I like to thanks all the bloggers & artists for making content this year even though Covid happened. (More on that later) I want to thanks my newspaper team and my friends for keeping this old guard around even though we lost two good ones this year as well. Let hope 2021 isn’t as bad as 2020 was in terms of everything just being canceled.

 

Covid-19

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As many of you are aware this year was pretty unusual for the world. A pandemic has reach every part of the world and canceled every social gathering event. YGO wasn’t spared as regional, ycs, and world events were basically canceled for the foreseeable future and will most likely not see any American or Euro event until this Pandemic is over.   In any case, a lot of group have venture into doing tournament online with some degree of success. Konami has been generous and kept updating the banlist when it could of easily pause the game. Hopefully, next year the game can return to in person tournaments. Remember to wash your hands and social distance to curve the virus.

 

A Tribute to the Fallen

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Once again I want to honor Empty Jar & Tina for their contributions to the newspaper and community. Empty Jar is a great artist who created so many comics for us to enjoy. It’s bascisally it’s own lore at this point. Tina is an artist and ex leader who contributed a lot to the community. This community meant a lot to both of them and I’m glad I can call each a friend. Check out their profiles if you want to see their past work.

Yuki’s Art Corner

Hello there~!

I am Yuki, and I’m here to drop of some happy lil stuffs today!

Oh, and aren’t we all glad 2020 is nearly over! I hope this next year coming has more lovely art pieces from the brilliant artists in this community; I also hope the next year will be better than this year!!

 

Now, I’m here to show some absolutely substantial works from this year which caught my eye, as well as shout out these artists and applaud their efforts! :two_hearts:

 

Let’s begin, shall we?

 

❀Perunia Lorony✿

 

This user ^^^ has some wonderful pieces of art!!

I especially love the work done with digital mediums! It’s well-utilised and overall great!!

Now! We have this one titled;

Dragons&Roses – Yu-Gi-Oh! Girls

(http://aminoapps.com/p/ow07z5)

 

I adore the designs, along with the usage of the colour red. The overall artwork is well-composed, the characters poses really help differentiate the personalities and styles they have, while also remaining nice and contrasting to the overall image!

 

The digital work is well-done too! There is a good usage of brushstrokes and the colours are flat while still showing texture and multiple dimensions!! :two_hearts:

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✿Djijser❀

 

Now I believe that Cosplay is simply another form of art! Similar to Music, Dance and the like!

So, I’m including this lovely Cosplayer on the list! ( :heavy_multiplication_x: ♡ :heavy_multiplication_x: )

The post I find to be my favourite is this one;

Yami Bakura

(http://aminoapps.com/p/4uqg4q)

 

I really like the look of this cosplay! It’s well put together and accurate to the actual design of the character!!

It’s overall super well done and I think it’s awesome!!

 

Also, damn, the photo quality is great!

It’s clear and the saturation is super balanced!

Super great!!

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❀Tina!✿

 

I wanted to dedicate a little section of this happy little corner to our friend Tina, who left a while back.

Their art was, to be all honest, extremely well done and I seriously couldn’t just pick out a single photo from the piles left behind.

So, I simply picked out one to show as an example ><

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It has amazingly placed colours, a unique, well composed and confident style and an overall tranquil feel.

It all feels soft and textured.

 

I find their art beautiful and, since they’ve moved on and away from our little space here, u wish them and their pretty art well uWu

 

❀ :heavy_multiplication_x: ✿

 

Well! That’s all it from me, have a good one!

Byee bee! (ᅌᴗᅌ✿)

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Luca’s tournament Analysis

Sup y’all! Luca, your Dark World Dealer, here. So since the last issue of the Newspaper, there we’ve seen the conclusion of the September AMCS as well as two subsequent AMCS’s.

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Following his victory in the August AMCS, Sliferdude1724 selected Salamangreat Sanctuary as the location for the September tournament. There were a total of 12 entrants, including both myself and Mary Sune. After 4 rounds of swiss and a stacked top 4 cut, your truly was able to emerge as the victor with pure Burning Abyss. Dragoon? Whack. Bardiche? Who needs him! All I needed was Dante and a dream!

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For October, the AMCS took a break from its usual festivities to host a Structure Deck tournament! Rules were simple. You could sign up using 3 copies of any one structure deck, with structure decks going on a first come first serve basis. I myself entered this one playing Dark Worlds, but unfortunately had to drop after round 2. In the end, Shyzanzan managed to pull out an impressive win. Piloting 3 copies of 2018’s Codebreaker Starter Deck, Shy capitalized on the number of strong staples that came in the deck to supplement a fairly consistent Cyberse engine that could usually put up multiple Transcode Talkers to pressure the opponent. Well done, now win a real AMCS my guy kek.

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Last but not least, we have the November AMCS. For this event, I made the theme Dragonic Diagram and implemented the most changes to the custom list thus far, including Pankratops to 3, Dinomight to 2 and unbanning Denglong. A total of 15 players entered, and when the dust settled, AMCS newcomer Mando managed to take the win! Piloting a fairly conventional Altergeist list, Mando managed to take down some of the best players in this group to secure an impressive win. Even in a format with 3 Red Reboot, 3 Pankratops, and a legal Feather Duster, Altergeist was able to win, which really shows the quality of our playerbase eh? This is the way.

 

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The Biggest YGO News stories, by a Certain Wolf :wolf:

Hiya everybody! It’s your favourite Newswolf Mary here and i’ve got a story or two for y’all!! So as we all know this year has been…shit, to say the least. but hey, what can ya do am i right?

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So well, what was the biggest news stories of this year? well let’s look into them shall we!

 

Story 1: All Events closed throughout the Year

This is a major one. We basically got no events at all during the years duration, and as such had to do substitutes. We still had Duel Link events like the KC Cup etc, but no YCS’, or any World Championships. We did get remote dueling, but as far as i’m aware there were many issues with it. If anything the best events we got were Marzo’s AMCS’, which is saying alot given how amazing they were

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Story 2: The overwhelming fluctuation in online meta

I have genuinely felt the backhand of the meta over the past year, so i can speak for many when i say that because ojline was such a useful tool people could straight up use Meta decks in online locals without consequences, such as the early years meta of Eldlich, and Adamancipator. This didn’t help given that the Trinity of 2020: Halqifibrax, Linkross and Dragoon were all released throughout the year, and infact Fibrax is the ultimate Banlister as he has slowly banned Tuners because of his abusive capabilities.

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Story 3: The Emergence of Errata Wall Dragon

Well this is a doozy! It was confirmed a little while ago the January 1st 2021 OCG List is…UNBANNING FIREWALL DRAGON?! WAAAHH?!?! Well actually it’s because he has been Errata’d HARD, but sadly it may not fix a few problems. All his effects are now Hard Once Per Turns, and even his effects were changed so he can only interact with Cyberse Monsters. This is…not good. Yes he’s limited in his usage now but what Cyberse Decks are doing really well rn? Salamangreat, and Code Talker..yeah let’s hope when we get the errata it doesn’t break the meta, i mean REDMD got errata’d not too long ago and it STILL sees play in Dragon Link.

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Good Luck! And Happy New Year! Comment below what pressies you got (i’m probably playing the PKMN Heartgold i got XD)

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2020 Metagame History ft The_SynchroGuy

 

Even though we didn’t get a whole lot of events this year like we usually do, we managed to suffice by having online tournaments. And while these weren’t hosted by Konami themselves, we still used the results from them to indicate what the current meta game was. So, let’s do a quick overview of the metagame for 2020.

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In the beginning of the new year, we got a banlist that marked the end of the now famous TOSS format. This list gutted Thunder Dragons by killing Colossus. It dethroned Orcust by crushing their favorite harp into a million pieces. Salamangreat got grounded after getting a ticket for using too much horse power. And finally, the wings of the angel that kept Sky Striker together were clipped. Now no one could get engaged this year. Except for Dzeeff.

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With the four kings now gone, this meant that any deck could come take the meta spots. We started seeing decks like SPYRAL return back to the meta game due to the new support card for Spellcaster cards/decks that came out around the time.

 

We also saw decks like Shaddoll (thanks to the structure deck) and Lunalight (the Xyz version) make a rise in popularity. And they were doing quite well. But it didn’t last too long once April came around. By then, not only did we officially entered into Master Rule 5 (MR5) but we also got another banlist that just stopped SPYRAL and Lunalight from being meta again for the foreseeable future.

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But around this time, the Secret Slayers deck building set came out in the TCG. And it gave us two new archetypes that became the new face of the meta. Them being Admancipator and Eldlich. Thanks to them, we saw Combo decks dominate the format. Admancipator was able to make a single turn 1 board that made it very difficult to out. And Eldlich did a similar thing thanks to the help of Jet Synchron, Crystron Halqifibrax, Linkross and Mecha Phantom Beast Auroradon.

 

By the time we got a new banlist, in June, hardly anything changed! Like, nothing got banned, limited, or even semi-limited! Only three cards got moved off the list. That’s it! This was because the pandemic was going on and no tournaments were able to be held, which meant Konami had no “official” data to use in order to determine what to hit on the list. Due to that, we were stuck with the Secret Slayer format for the next couple of months.

 

While we did get new cards during this time, they were not enough to deal with the current meta. Then came September, and with it the end of the Secret Slayer format. Konami killed Adamancipator by banning their favorite little toy, Block Dragon. And they killed the Synchro variant of Eldlich by banning both Jet Synchron and Mecha Phantom Beast O-Lion.

 

From there, we saw a couple of new decks rise to the top meta spots. Those decks being: Dragon Link, Infernoble, Dinosaur, and Dogmatika Invoked (sometimes with the Eldlich variant). These were decks that either picked up the same strategy that Admanacipator used before they got DQed from their meta spots, used an old Yu-Gi-Oh! card to limit their opponent’s hand resource, or even just found its way to the meta through its own strength.

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By the time November came around, Virtual World would quickly join them. Then came the December banlist. Thanks to the banning of cards like Dragon Buster, Linkross and Smoke Grenade of the Theif, we quickly saw Dragon Link and Infernoble leave their thrones in the meta game. And at the time of writing this, only one new archetype has started to stake its place in the meta. That being Drytron.

 

And that is the Yu-Gi-Oh! meta game throughout 2020. The one we currently have won’t be ending until something new and more busted becomes a thing, or until we get the upcoming March banlist gets released.

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Top Blogs of 2020 ft Enishi & The_SynchroGuy

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So after much debate and finding common ground here are the top blog of 2020 in no specific order with honorable mentions. Honestly all these blogs are so amazing that I thought it was better to have them all included in this review. This year shows that content creation for the amino is still alive and making a comeback. Congratulations everyone for the hard work.

 

Honorable mentions

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Phantom Knight Deck Profile November 2020(Post Phantom Rage)

The Forgotten Waifu that is Carly Carmine

The Real Protagonist of Yu-Gi-Oh

Once and For all who is Jaden’s rival?

Crush Card Cup 2020 Experience

Top 7 Underrated YGO Characters

Fixing the Archetype: Divine Beast

How to Improve at YGO

Deck Building 101

Clear from Anime to Real Life

Competitive History of Cyber Dragons

Yuma Tsukumo Zero or Hero?

 

Top Blogs of 2020

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The Brilliance of Bakura’s Villainy

The Problem with Curious: Should it be ban?

Crash Town – The Best Short Arc of YGO

From a Friend to Foe to Back: Kalin Story

Origins of the Musketeers

The Shadowverse in My Opinion is What the YGO Anime Should be

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Top Blogger of 2020

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Zyro

Honorable Mention

Random Guy(Will)

Peruniya Lorony

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Amino YuGituber of the Year

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Ru-Fi-Oh

Honorable Mention

Slim YGO

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The Newspaper Team favorite Leader| Curator

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Luca:Uhhh probably Marzo. He’s been working hard to balance being a curator, school, and hosting the AMCS. He’s helped bring a competitive scene back to the group, something that’s been seriously lacking for sometime now. Especially now with Covid a lot of players have lost the motivation to play, and the AMCS has helped many stay in touch with the game while also allowing them to make friends that they otherwise might not have met.

 

Yuki:For my favourite cutator // leader..Hmn..! I’d say it’d be Tina. They were very nice and approachable!! (✿˵◕‿◕˵)

 

The_SynchroGuy:I honestly have to give it to Tina. She was able to not only put out events, but helped support them by participating in them with her awesome drawings. She sacrificed a lot of her free time to help keep Duel Amino alive. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to. I would like to see her come back someday and help support this place again, but right now, she needs to do what she needs to do to be herself. Thanks for all the support you gave for here, Tina!

 

Enishi: It’ll have to be Tina. She was really passionate and involved with the community. She really loved it here believe it or not. She set the example in how to make good art blogs I hope she is succeeding in her goals. We wish her we and we miss her. (Plus she’s my waifu)

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What we look forward to in 2021

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Luca: Duel Links is actually playable again so I’m probably going to do more content around that. I’m currently working on an analysis/discussion of Noble Knights in the game that will hopefully give newer players who are interested in getting into the game a good idea of where to start. In regards to the TCG I’m not really sure. No events happening has killed most of my motivation to play, but hey maybe with the vaccine coming out locals and potentially regionals will start up again before the end of 2021 and I can have something to look forward to. Fingers crossed.

 

Yuki:Ta look forward to in 2021, huh..?

Ooh..!! Art! (///∇///✿)

Not so much my stuffs , but everyone else’s stuffs! I’m sure 2021 is gonna be a good year for artsy stuffs so I personally look forward to it and I hope you do too! (´ ꒳ ` ✿)

 

The_SynchroGuy:I know a lot of people are probably gonna say they hated this year, and not just because of Covid-19. But I still had a blast this year. Maybe not as much if I was able to go to my locals and events, but I still managed to find my enjoyment. And I’m sure I’m going to like where things will be going in 2021. I’m sure there will be some good and bad Yu-Gi-Oh! sets we’ll be getting next year. And there will most likely come a new meta that we’ll either love or hate, and I’m looking forward to all of it. If chaos starts to ensue, then I look forward to standing on top of all of it! :smiling_imp:

 

Enishi: I hope in 2021 we get a return to normalcy. I do miss going out and playing card games believe it or not. I want to meet a few people on here in person when this is all set and done. Plus, I do want to go to a regional once again just to go x-3 :’)

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Conclusion

We all would like to thank you for giving us your support this. I like to give a shout out to Lil Goth for making events for the amino that inspire the creation of new art and blogs. We all look forward for the events you’ll create for 2021. I want to give a shout out as well to my friend Kia for making our cover for this edition of the YGO newspaper. I really appreciate it! Here is the proof that they create it here. I want to thank each member of the team for making all this possible as well. From all of us to you we wish you a Happy New Year!

 

Best,

The YGO Newspaper Team