We’re only two rounds into this tournament, and already we’re seeing some defining tech emerge thanks to recent rulings revisions made earlier this week.

Royal Oppression Rocks Unsuspecting Victims

Ever since the debut of Gadgets at 2007’s Shonen Jump Championship Orlando, there’s been a consistent ruling about continuous traps with activated effects: in order to activate the effect of a continuous trap like Ultimate Offering or Royal Oppression, it must be face up on the field first. That’s why a duelist that wanted to play carefully always flipped Royal Oppression in the opponent’s standby phase when he or she expected the opponent to attempt a special summon that turn. Doing so made Oppression a live play in response to future special summons.

But just this past week a pair of new rulings on Royal Oppression overturned previous statements. It is now legal to respond to an inherent special summon, contact Fusion, or an effect that special summons a monster by flipping Royal Oppression and then immediately activating its effect. You can find the relevant rulings at their source here and here on the Upper Deck forums.

The ramifications of this change are huge, and while many duelists may not be aware of the difference, some definitely are — especially Shonen Jump Championship regulars. Royal Oppression is now a surprise play, meaning that it can be held until your opponent attempts to make a special summon and then flipped in response to negate it. It may as well be a totally different card. A far better one.

That’s bad news for a variety of “inherent special summon” monsters and contact Fusions that are frequently special summoned onto a field when the opponent controls face-down spell or trap cards. Few competitors clear the opposing spell and trap zone before summoning Dark Armed Dragon, Judgment Dragon, or especially Gladiator Beast Gyzarus — the point of summoning such a monster is often to destroy those back row cards. So in addition to Solemn Judgment, duelists playing those monsters are now going to have to fear face-down copies of Oppression when facing a field of imperfect information. While duelists piloting Dark Armed or Judgment Dragon are used to having to take precautionary measures, there are a lot of Gladiator Beast players that are going to be getting rude awakenings, losing two of their cards to Oppression while the tricky trap card remains on the field.

Duelists are splashing Royal Oppression into their main and side decks this morning, similar to how Prohibition was frantically included in decks at the US National Championships. Expect to see a tremendous amount of it at the top tables today. If enough players are aware of the new rulings then Gladiator Beasts may be in trouble.

Test Tiger Trouble

Speaking of, Gladiator Beasts have taken another hit due to players realizing the ramifications of a ruling made back in February. It’s been months since it was ruled that the target of Test Tiger’s effect needed to remain on the controller’s side of the field for the Tiger’s effect to resolve, but few duelists realized what that meant for Enemy Controller. It seems like they’ve figured it out, as several competitors have told me today about how they plan to steal their opponent’s Test Tiger targets on the chain.

Enemy Controller was already great tech against Gladiator Beasts and big monsters in general, staving off Gladiator attacks that would create free card destructions or contact Fusions if permitted to resolve. Even turning Gladiator Beast Gyzarus to defense mode can save a lot of life points, while keeping Gyzarus from tagging out — that means no easy Gladiator Beast Heraklinos, and a field position where two cards have been consolidated into one vulnerable monster. Since Gyzarus has a relatively low 1500 DEF, anything from an opposing Laquari to Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress or Dark Grepher can take it down from there. In the mirror match Enemy Controller is even more brutal, stealing opposing Gladiators so they can make direct attacks and then be tagged out to retain field presence.

Enemy Controller’s great against Dark Armed Dragon and Judgment Dragon too, chaining to their destruction effects to stave off the considerable damage such a monster can do with a direct attack. This certainly isn’t news to anyone who’s played in even just a handful of tournaments, but it bears discussion, because Controller’s “trump card” status means it’s a highly useful card in virtually all top matchups right now. If a card can shut down the biggest moves from every single deck you plan to face, and has offensive utility as well, well, it’s going to see a lot of play, and that’s what we’re seeing here this morning.

Dekoichi Chugs Along the Comeback Tracks

Another old school card that’s seeing a ton of renewed interest today is Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive. For several reasons, too. The most obvious is naturally Adam Corn’s success with Dekoichi in his Dark Armed Monarch variant at the US National Championships; duelists are doing everything from net-decking his build, to copying just portions of it, to applying the deck’s core principles to totally different high-tribute strategies. Corn’s deck ushered in a renewed viability for the old “tribute a flip effect monster after it gets me a card” stratagem, and players are really taking that to heart.

It’s a viable strategy for a number of reasons, including ones that seem new for today’s tournament. The field here is a bit slower than it was at American and Canadian Nationals, owing to several individual cards. Elemental Hero Stratos is a big pick for seemingly everybody playing Gladiator Beasts — that makes the deck a turn slower, making Dekoichi a much safer early game play. The widespread use of Royal Oppression is also cutting a lot of early-game offensives short, in matchups ranging from Gladiator Beasts to Lightsworn and beyond. Main decked Prime Material Dragons in just about everything is also giving some duelists more reason to play defensively, making Dekoichi a safer card to set. Meanwhile, few to no competitors are running Nobleman of Crossout, so the chief factor that used to keep Dekoichi in line simply isn’t being represented in today’s metagame.

Cold Wave Crushes the Competition

While Cold Wave has been an on-again, off-again choice for Gladiator Beast duelists, it’s seeing increased play in both that deck and others here this weekend. It was a strong pick going in, with Monarchs gaining power and raw aggression being so good against them, but it gained power with the upswing in Royal Oppression. Decks that rely on special summoning to make big attacks have been hit hard, but Cold Wave can mitigate its impact, since even if Oppression is chained to Cold Wave’s activation its effect can’t be activated later in the turn once Cold Wave has taken hold.

That means we’re seeing a lot more Cold Wave in Lightsworn decks, and it’s a popular pick for a lot of the emerging Light Beatdown decks (which are being played in a variety of ways this weekend, by more duelists than just Paul Levitin). It’s also being run in every Six Samurai deck I’ve seen so far, another deck that has seen renewed interest thanks to representation in US and Canadian Nationals.