Dear Judges,
We hope you're all doing well. On behalf of UDE Yu-Gi-Oh! R&D (myself, Dan Scheidegger, & Justin Reilly) we wanted to wish all of you a happy holiday season and a Happy New Year. And we hope you and your players enjoy your little holiday present from UDE & Konami regarding the change to the Forbidden List.
Also, we wanted to give you a heads up that you're going to be seeing a lot of fun and exciting stuff in 2007.
For starters, you may have already seen some of the contents for the upcoming Champion Pack 2, revealed in the latest Shonen Jump magazine. The ultra-rare for CP02 will be Magical Stone Excavation, a card used by Marik on the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime and by Aster Phoenix on Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. The super-rares in Champion Pack 2 will be foil versions of Nimble Momonga, Magician of Faith, Pyramid Turtle, and Smashing Ground. And one of the rares is the "Purple" Kuriboh that was previously only available as a video game promo. We haven't revealed any of the other rares or commons yet, but you're going to be pretty surprised by some of those, too.
The REAL excitement starts in late February at the Strike of Neos Sneak Preview on February 24 & 25th. Attendees to this event (depending on location) will be able to get a very, very special brand new card never before seen anywhere on Earth!
This card was specifically designed by UDE & Konami for the Sneak Preview event. It's a very good card, and we've been having a ton of fun playing with it here at the office. More details about this card, such as its name, will be revealed in the weeks to come.
Additionally, UDE has been working more closely with Konami to make sure that more cards are going into upcoming sets that you, and the players, want. Strike of Neos contains new Dark World monsters, Ritual Summon support, and powerful new Normal Monsters that break the existing barriers (example: a Level 4 Normal Monster with 2000 ATK).
The set coming out in May will have "legacy" support for older themes, like Gravekeepers, Harpies, Archfiends, and more! Why? Because that's what the players have been asking for, and we're going to give it to them.
You'll be seeing a lot of surprises in 2007. Cards, packs, events, and more won't be quite what you're expecting. They'll be better, more exciting, newer, and fresher.
Happy Holidays from UDE Yu-Gi-Oh! R&D,
Kevin Tewart
Dan Scheidegger
Justin Reilly
