It’s not even round 3 yet, and already, there are some dominant tech trends being reflected in the decklists of top players.

Last Will

At least one duelist from every major team here today is running Last Will, with several teams packing it in almost every single deck. The recent re-rulings regarding how Last Will functions have made it incredibly powerful in the opinions of some, and the word “broken” has definitely been uttered.

If you haven’t seen the changes yourself, two important alterations were made to Last Will. The first is that now you can play Last Will after a monster has been sent to the graveyard: you don’t need to play it before, in anticipation of a tribute or failure in battle later on. That alone takes all the chance out of playing with Last Will, removing the factor that often made it a dead card. In addition, you can now claim the summon from Last Will any time you want during your turn, aside from the damage step. You aren’t forced to special summon a monster right away when one is sent packing, and that makes Last Will precise, flexible, and incredibly powerful.

You can grab a ton of cards with it as well—keep your card presence going with Sangan, or maintain field presence with Mystic Tomato or D. D. Warrior Lady. Monarch decks, or anything heavy on tributes, can fetch Treeborn Frog so that a normal summon doesn’t need to be expended on bringing it into play. If the Frog is already on the field, hey, aces: just play Last Will and tribute the Frog away like you were planning to do anyways. Frog comes back next turn and gives you not only a free tribute, but also a free pull with Will. Newdoria, Don Zaloog, Mystic Swordsman LV2… the list of top tier cards Last Will gives access to goes on for ages. With that said though, the most popular is Spirit Reaper, and that’s primarily because of the new rulings on Will’s effect. Because you can special summon the monster any time you want, a duelist can make their attacks for the turn with the monsters they have on the field, resolve battle as normal, and when they’re finished with their on-field attackers they can THEN pull Spirit Reaper and attack directly. It’s an unexpected and utterly rattling threat, that even if you do see coming, puts you at a disadvantage. If the opponent has played Last Will and has triggered it, and you know the opponent might have a Spirit Reaper waiting in the wings, you have to hold back on Sakuretsu Armor or else risk losing a card to Reaper. But if you do that, the opponent could easily just pull Sangan to stymie Sakuretsu Armor and score a free 1000 damage. It’s bad beats all around, and it’s going to be a popular play here today.

Creature Swap

Plenty of competitors, big and small, are running Creature Swap. A natural choice for Tomato Control, it’s taking the place of Smashing Ground in the deck lists of many. Comic Odyssey are all main decking a pair, Robert Morgan has been running one for ages, and Andrew Hayton of Team Xtreme is also using it.

As I mentioned in the Comic Odyssey Deck Profile, Creature Swap offers a lot of synergy to commonly-used monsters. Spent Flip Effect monsters, Mystic Tomato, Sangan, and Tsukuyomi are all great to send over to the opponent. Literally half of the average deck’s monster lineup combos with it effectively, and the ability to force the opponent to hand over his or her big tribute monsters instead of destroying them outright is an attractive option. With more and more duelists returning to two and three Spirit Reaper after the single-Reaper trend set by Shane Scurry at Shonen Jump Baltimore, this high-synergy spell card just keeps getting better and better.

Royal Decree

The single copy of Decree trend has popped up a lot here, with many duelists giving a nod to Robert Morgan. Most competitors expect Chaos Return to be the dominant archetype here today as far as numbers go, and Royal Decree shuts the deck down hard. Momentum and freedom to attack without the need to run Mirage Dragon, Jinzo, or Pitch-Black Warwolf is what Decree is all about, as it offers more universal trap control without necessitating the expenditure of a normal summon.

While Comic Odyssey is running it in threes and lots of others are running just one, there’s some middle ground too. While convincing arguments can be made for the benefits of running a single copy, and running it in triplicate is an obviously legitimate deck focus, some are even daring to experiment with a pair of them. We’ll have to wait until the end of the day to see how that works out.

There is a lot of trap hate here today, between the negation power of Decree and Jinzo, and pre-negation from Dust Tornado. “There’s so much Decree,” remarked Dale Bellido in passing, coming off his round 2 win. While a pair of Tornado has always been a popular choice for many top players, it seems to be seeing more emphasis today. I wouldn’t be surprised if the average trap count at Nationals is back down to just five or six cards, with Enemy Controller and Reinforcement of the Army seeing more use.

Morphing Jar

Again, with Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World practically absent from the North American metagame since its impressive appearance at Shonen Jumps Durham and Long Beach, Morphing Jar is free to roam. At the same time, many duelists don’t expect to see it like they did two formats ago, so someone running Morphing Jar can get away with setting it and a handful of back row cards. If an opponent can’t make the read of Morphing Jar, they won’t set their cards as well, and that leaves the Jar user at a distinct advantage once the Jar flips and both hands are reset to five cards total.

It’s a great card for Chaos Return too, getting monsters into the graveyard for use with Chaos Sorcerer earlier than would be expected, all the while digging towards copies of Return from the Different Dimension. The fact that it loads the graveyard without actually costing cards or normal summons in the process is also a huge factor contributing to its popularity: you don’t have to wait for the opponent to take aggressive action in order to accrue the resources Chaos Sorcerer demands. That means more proactive action for you, and fewer dead Chaos Sorcerers locked in your hand without a Light or Dark in the graveyard. Speed equals wins in this format, and that’s precisely what Morphing Jar delivers. Overdose swears by it, and members of the Super Friends, Team Xtreme, and Rampage are all running it here today.

Watch for all four of these cards to be popular picks at Nationals. Creature Swap can be a hard sell due to its potential to be a poor topdeck, so it may not make the cut despite winning a lot of games here today. But Decree, Last Will, and Morphing Jar are all going to be huge, especially if a few copies of each make it into the Top 8 this weekend.

Stay tuned to see how these format-shaking prospects wind up performing over the course of the day!