Right off the bat today in round one, two cards are demonstrating an unexpected level of impact. Two weeks ago, if you’d named either of these cards to your average duelist, they probably would have blinked, stared vapidly, and then run off to their card binders or the handy Metagame.com database to look them up. Most would not have even known what these cards did.

But today, it’s all about two cards—Elephant Statue of Disaster and Chain Disappearance! Let’s take a look at each one and see why they’re expected to be defining cards for the day.

Elephant Statue of Disaster: A 1500 ATK Earth/Rock monster from Ancient Sanctuary, this monster is level 3 and has a whopping defense of nothing. That’s right, its stats are horrible. Also, it’s not a Light or Dark Monster, so it can’t be used as Chaos fodder. It has a completely reactive effect. Elephant Statue of Disaster looks horrible at first glance, and that’s what will make it the sleeper hit of the tournament and a side deck staple in months to come.

It’s the Elephant Statue’s effect that makes it so great in the current metagame. Morphing Jar has become incredibly popular for several reasons. Cookie Jar Deck Destruction decks run it as an integral part of their win condition, using it to discard huge numbers of cards that the opponent needs, while tearing through the player’s own deck. Regular Chaos variants run it as well though, as the current environment rewards playing it with the potential for massive hand advantage. Current play trends encourage duelists to hold onto cards for a long period of time and spend cards conservatively until a win is virtually ensured, and that means players will often be holding onto four or five cards. Opponents can set spells and traps, flip Morphing Jar, and gain massive card advantage as a result.

The side effect, the discarding of both players’ hands, is often the least-lauded part of the card. But if your opponent is using it on you (and only if it’s your opponent using it) you can use Elephant Statue of Disaster’s effect as a result, dishing out a harsh 2000 life points’ worth of damage. That’s a quarter of the duel done, and in a situation where both players have been building up their field looking for openings, it can be a game-winning factor.

It can be used in the damage step too, so you can use it to counter Spirit Reaper and Don Zaloog. I’d imagine the exchange would go something like this.

Naïve opponent attacking with Spirit Reaper: “You take 300, lose a card!”

You: “You take 2000, lose the game!”

And of course, it smacks an opponent in return for Delinquent Duo, meaning that a single Duo suddenly costs 3000 LP instead of 1000. Yowch.

The low ATK on Elephant Statue even makes it searchable with Sangan’s effect. Seeking it out sends a very clear message to an observant opponent, and it’s a discouraging message for anyone who would look to discard your cards.

Most people today are running a pair of Statues in their side deck. If such tech proves successful, expect to see this once-lowly common from Ancient Sanctuary explode in popularity across the country! 

Chain Disappearance: Last weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, I described Chain Disappearance as “likely the number one piece of tech leading up to Nationals.” While Asura Priest, Slate Warrior, Night Assailant, and other cards have all made their big appearances at recent Shonen Jump Championships, Chain Disappearance is still relatively fresh and many players today aren’t aware of its potential.

Those that are, though? They love it to death.

A few attendees hate the card. In particular, Magician of Faith, Thousand-Eyes Restrict, and Scapegoat tokens are considering protesting. “It’s just not fair!” whined Thousand-Eyes, in a candid interview earlier today.

Okay . . . so that never happened. But it’s true that Chain Disappearance is just totally unfair in its utter decimation of Magician of Faith, Scapegoat, and Thousand-Eyes Restrict. When used on Thousand-Eyes Restrict it not only deals with the copy that’s in play, but it also removes all other copies from the opponent’s fusion deck. A single hit like that lays a Thousand-Eyes Restrict Lockdown deck flat on its back—there’s just no recovering from losing the core of your strategy.

At the same time, Chain Disappearance not only decimates one Sheep token when Scapegoat hits the field, but it blows away all of them at the same time. You basically trade your Chain Disappearance for your opponent’s Scapegoat, which is a mathematically even trade, but odds are good that your opponent was relying on the Scapegoat to stay alive. Essentially, you can accomplish three things through the use of Chain Disappearance when playing against Scapegoat:

1. Use it in response to your opponent’s Scapegoat when you attempt to attack. Unless they have another defensive card at the ready, their next play is probably, “Look sad and get pounded by your now-unblocked attackers.”

2. Cut off an opponent’s source of cheap tribute material for Metamorphosis. Though Chain can be used to nix Thousand-Eyes Restrict itself and rip its dirty little brethren from the Fusion deck, you can actually just nip the problem in the bud by denying your opponent the tokens to begin with. That means your opponent will either have to use Metamorphosis on a monster or just give up on summoning Thousand-Eyes for a while. Both of those are poor situations to be stuck in.

3. Use it when your opponent randomly activates Scapegoat out of desperation, turning a bad situation into a worse one.

Magician of Faith hates it too, since you can use it on your own copy. Here’s the combo.

1. Flip your Magician of Faith, placing its effect on the chain.

2. Respond to its effect going on the chain with Chain Disappearance, making it the next link on the chain.

3. Laugh as the chain resolves. You get a free spell card returned to your hand from the graveyard, your weak and vulnerable Magician gets removed from the line of fire, and your opponent strips all copies of Magician from his or her deck.

Pretty neat, huh? You can, of course, chain it in response to your opponent flipping his or her own Magician of Faith, but using it on yours just has more flair. While this is a trick that duelists will become familiar with over the coming months, it’s really going to surprise people today.

Both of these cards wreck important cards in today’s metagame, and the interesting part is that they tech aggressively into relatively new strategies. In the past year, Yu-Gi-Oh! has gone from being a relatively slow-growth game to becoming intensely fast-paced, and while these two cards are on the cutting edge, there’s bound to be more nuggets of brilliance over the course of the day!