Duel! - The New Face of YuGiOh

I decided to buy a single pack of the Duelist Genesis - and I got Handcuffs Dragon, so I'm a happy camper. Big Piece Golem would be nice, but I'd rather spend money on comics than on something that might possibly have BPG in it. But I've already spoken about Duelist Genesis - today, we have Exclusive Tins to talk about. These are new - well, actually, they're not. They're exactly the same as Collectors Tins, except instead of having the artwork of the promotional card on them, they have the main character from 5D's on them. His name is Yusei Fudo, and he continues the trend of having wild multicolored hair started by Yugi and Jaden. From what little I know of translation, I think Yusei could be rendered as Jason, but apparently they're no longer Anglicising character names.

There are three tins, a choice of red, white or yellow, and a choice of Nitro Warrior, Goyo Guardian or Montage Dragon. I'm not sure which card matches which colour. The choices for promo cards are interesting - Nitro Warrior is the only one of the three used by Yusei. It would make more sense to me if they had swapped some cards with the Collector's Tins so that the Exclusive Tins had Yusei's best cards (Nitro Warrior, Turbo Warrior and Stardust Dragon) leaving the Collectors with those of his rivals. Then again, Stardust Dragon and Speed Warrior have such high profiles in the anime that they can sell themselves, whereas Goyo Guardian and Montage Dragon have a lower profile and might sell less without a boost from Yusei's face.

But do the cards deserve their promotional status? Definitely. Nitro Warrior can blast through an entire defensive field of monsters in one turn, its power being offset by stringent synchro requirements and the rarity of Nitro Synchron. Goyo Guardian has the same attack points, and its synchro requirements are a lot more relaxed. Plus it can summon defeated enemies to its side - the drawback being they're in defence position till your next turn. Of the three, Goyo is the one I want most. Montage Dragon is interesting - it is special summoned by discarding three monsters from your hand and its power is related to the levels of those monsters. Plus you can still normal summon. Seems easy, but how often do you have five monster cards in your hand?

Oh, right there's other stuff in these too. Six packs: one Phantom Darkness, two Light of Destruction, two Duelist Genesis and a Token Pack. I do not entirely believe that Phantom Darkness and Light of Destruction are the 'best selling packs of the GX era', but they have some really good cards. The token pack consists of cards called tokens, rather than small round things I would regard as tokens. They are also completely unnecessary as you can use anything from a dice to coins to represent tokens, but they can be fun.

Verdict: Major Victory! There are few really good cards in the Duelist Genesis, and these are some of them.