The strength of nostalgia is not to be underestimated. Amidst the overwhelming popularity of the Ryzeal and Maliss archetypes in the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game (TCG), there is a small subset of players who have gone back to the golden years of Yu-Gi-Oh’s dawn.
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon archetype has seen a resurgence in popularity in the weeks leading to and after the release of Konami’s newest structure deck, Blue-Eyes White Destiny.
The item garnered admiration for supporting one of its mainstay mascots and supplying any player buying the product with a host of competitive staples. This made the structure deck very friendly to anyone new to the game or looking to enter the competitive scene for the first time.
There is a general consensus amongst fans that anyone could buy three copies of the structure deck, combine them, and they’d be moderately successful at an organized tournament held by their friendly local game store (LGS). That said, it turns out the archetype is lot more competitive than expected.
Last weekend (February 15-16th), the World Championship Qualifiers held in Melbourne and Dublin, respectively, had the archetype in question winning the top spot.
With these wins under the archetype’s belt, the secondary market is already reflecting the current demand for cards used to support the white dragon.
Primite Lordly Lode
One of the mainstay cards in the competitive version of the deck is Primite Lordly Lode. This continuous spell started out at $53 average at the end of last month, but prices are now climbing to an $87 average with some individual sales breaching past the $100 mark over at TCGplayer.com.
It’s not surprising to see this happen, though, as Primite cards have seen a lot of synergy with the Blue-Eyes archetype as of late. Lordly Lode is a two-for-one special as it lets you search out other members of the Primite arsenal while allowing the player to special summon a normal monster from the hand, graveyard, or deck. And as it so happens, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon is a normal monster.
Dominus Purge
Alongside Primite Lordly Lode, the trap card Dominus Purge is also climbing the second-hand market prices. While not as commanding, Dominus Purge still enjoyed an average price increase from $33 to a more recent $50, with a few individual sales already jumping to the $70 mark.
Dominus Purge is seen as another hand trap to add to the mixture of competitive staples. This is because Dominus Purge bypasses a lot of handtrap counters, such as Call by the Grave or the Triple Tactics duo of Thrust and Talent. This makes Dominus Purge a good substitute for Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring in some scenarios.
While Dominus Purge does have a debilitating cost of locking the player out from accessing the effects of Dark, Water, and Fire monsters for the rest of the duel, the Blue-Eyes archetype generally consists of light-based monsters, making this a very negligible cost with some graceful deck building.
Ultimately, this could mark the beginning of a larger rise for the nostalgic Blue-Eyes archetype. The archetype caught the competitive world by surprise recently, but now that player's eyes are trained on the Dragon, the real test is on the horizon.
Blue-Eyes Structure Deck Sees Sudden Price Spike Due to Unexpected Rarity