Saturday was the Advanced Main Event’s Day 1 at YCS Houston: nine Swiss rounds, and the Top 256 Duelists move on to Sunday, where they play five more rounds of Swiss before the cut to the Top 8. One wrinkle Konami flagged: Duelists who made Day 2 of both the Genesys and Advanced Main Events have to pick one, so their drops can shuffle the bottom of the Top 256 overnight.
Standings and decks at the top
Jason Hutchinson of Texas leads on 27 points after Round 9, with Blake Antonio Funderburke in second, also on 27. James Allen Cumblidge rounds out the top three on 24 points, just ahead of a wall of 24-point Duelists that includes Steven Trifunoski.
The Round 9 top tables breakdown shows what the Advanced format looks like right now: Elfnote decks and Angelechy decks owned the top tables, with 10 and 9 respectively in the Round 9 feature seats, and Power Patron Elfnote variants adding 4 more. Mitsurugi and Light and Darkness Ritual followed with 5 each. A long tail of rogue strategies hung on at the top tables, including Maliss Dormouse
Feature matches
Two 7-1 players met in the Round 9 feature match: Steven Trifunoski of Toronto, Canada on a Power Patron Elfnote deck that had already won a Round 5 feature match on the livestream, against Houston’s own James Valentino on @Ignister Maliss. Trifunoski’s Duel 1 opener showed the deck’s Synchro ladder in full — Medius the Pure, Elfnote Synchro climbs into Elfnote Seraphim Strelitzia, then F.A. Dawn Dragster — before a packed top-deck war against Valentino’s fast Maliss starts.
In Round 8, Dallas’s Stephen Crouse brought Tellarknights against Jermaine Leach of Philadelphia and his R.B. Cyber Dragons, a build that opens on Cyberdark Chimera, Power Bond into Chimeratech Rampage Dragon, and stacks K9 and R.B. pieces into Link and Xyz plays.
The Saturday stream also kept returning to Dark Magician on the feature stage — a deck that showed up once in the written top tables list too — including long games built around Dark Magical Circle chains and Chaos Synchro turns.
Two more ban list parts
Saturday brought parts 2 and 3 of the next Forbidden & Limited List, announced between rounds. Part 2 sent seven cards to Forbidden — among them Beelze of the Diabolic Dragons and Charmer Quartet in Bloom — with Branded Opening Limited. Part 3 followed with seven more Forbidden cards, including Saryuja Skull Dread, while Toon Table of Contents went Limited. Sunday’s final two parts are the last reveals before the list takes effect.
What’s next
Sunday is the last day: both Main Events finish their Swiss rounds and cut to the Top 8, and the final two parts of the ban list are expected. Follow our running Forbidden & Limited List article for each reveal.