The North American Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Qualifier is right around the corner, many duelists are preparing their decks and making some final adjustments according to what they think will appear at nationals this year. This is the second biggest event of the year next to the World Championships. One of the most important things you will need for this event is your Side Deck. Your Side Deck is what will usually turn around a bad or even your worst match up, and when it comes down to it you need to know what you may be up against and what your decks greatest weakness is and how to counter their counter to your deck. Well I wanted to go over a few of the more popular Side Deck choices that pretty much everyone should intend on Side Decking at the WCQ this year.

The first Side Deck card we will cover is Puppet Plant. I'm sure there are a lot of you that may be iffy on this, but it works. While it is true that Kinetic Soldier can run over or fend off pretty much any Six Samurai monster, it is not true that it can stand up to a Ally of Justice Catastor, which I'm pretty sure all of you know can automatically destroy Kinetic Soldier. However Puppet Plant is what I would call a multi-purpose card as it is an excellent Side Deck card for the fact that you can side it against 3 different decks; Six Samurai, HERO variants, and lastly Gravekeeper's. All 3 of these decks you have a high chance of running into this year at the WCQ, and this card can help with taking them down. Picture taking your opponents Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En and using it to Synchro Summon with. You could take it even if you have no monsters out, allowing you to freely attack over one of their Six Samurai monsters or even into another copy of their Shi En, you could even tribute the monster you take. Same goes for those HERO or Gemini variant decks that are big around Elemental HERO Neos Alius and Elemental HERO Stratos as well as Fusion Summoning out Elemental HERO The Shining and from time to time Elemental HERO Absolute Zero. When it comes to Gravekeeper's, they're essentially 99.999999% all Spellcaster-Type monsters. While it is true that there may not be much you can do with their monsters you can still attack them with whatever you decide to take. You can move their 2500 DEF wall out of your way if you want to. As long as you put some thought into it, Puppet Plant is an excellent Side Deck card that everyone should at least consider using.


Speaking of Gravekeeper's there is a more effective way of hurting them outside of Puppet Plant, and it even works on Blackwings. In about 3 to 4 months time it will also be an answer for Dark World as well. Of course I am talking about Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror. Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror is much like Puppet Plant, it is another card I consider to be a multi-purpose card as it can affect more than one deck. Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror hurts all three decks about as equally hard, so if you're worst or toughest match up is against any of these decks Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror is something for you to consider. Gravekeeper's rely a lot on Gravekeeper's Spy, Gravekeeper's Descendant and Gravekeeper's Recruiter to blast through your field while shutting your Graveyard down. With Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror already active on the field, their monsters are nothing more than beefed up versions of themselves thanks to Necrovalley, however this is essentially the only thing left for you to worry about when it comes to Gravekeeper's while you have Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror active. Blackwings are different and slightly harder to stop with Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror thanks to them having Icarus Attack in their arsenal and even Mystical Space Typhoon, but Typhoon is a threat most decks have these days. Blackwings have a few variants and all have effects that activate in the Graveyard or on the field with the exception of Blackwing - Kalut the Moon Shadow who activates in the hand. Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, if left on the field long enough, will allow you to win over Blackwings fairly easy. It's their Icarus Attack and the occasional Mystical Space Typhoon that can prove to be a problem. Lastly is Dark World, which we have yet to actually see in the TCG yet but I figured I've cover this for later down the line. Dark World for its entirety activates in the Graveyard. Sillva, Goldd, Broww, Snow, Grapha, the works. They all activate in the Graveyard. This means if you can open a Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror against them their entire deck is shut down. The only way they can get out of it is with a Mystical Space Typhoon. There are many other decks that Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror works well against, like Doppelplants with Junk Synchron, Doppelwarrior and T.G. Hyper Librarian all being DARK Attributed monsters. Whether you decide to now, or later, Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror is yet another card you should give some serious consideration for your Side Decks.


Next Side Deck card we'll discuss is Gozen Match. Gozen Match is a nasty Trap Card that forces both players to send monsters they control to the Graveyard until they each control only monsters of 1 Attribute. This is an excellent card against decks such as Six Samurai, Doppelplants, Tengu Synchro and so on. But there's more to Gozen Match, while it remains on the field neither player can control monsters with different Attributes. This means if the opponent plays Junk Synchron, targeting something like Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter, Spore or Glow-Up Bulb, you can chain Gozen Match to it. This will prevent their monster from being brought back because they can no longer control monsters of different Attributes while at the same time forcing both players to send monsters they control to the Graveyard so they both only control monsters with 1 Attribute. This card is an excellent Side Deck card for decks that use mainly 1 Attribute. Decks like Scraps, Blackwings and Gravekeeper's. The only problems this card has to face is those teched Mystical Space Typhoons and the occasional Seven Tools of the Bandit. Gozen Match puts some serious pressure on a lot of decks despite the Mystical Space Typhoons and Seven Tools of the Bandits, and is a card that can fit in most decks.


We're almost done folks, onto the next Side Deck card which is Chain Disappearance. Chain Disappearance is an amazing card that shuts down Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En plays for good as well as severely hurting Doppelplants and Dragunitys. When a monster(s) with 1000 or less ATK is Normal, Flip or Special Summoned, remove those summoned monster(s) and the opponent removes from play any other copies of those cards from their hand or Deck from the game. This means Chain Disappearance will for the most part be removing cards like Dragunity Phalanx, Dragunity Aklys, Kagemusha of the Six Samurai and various cards from Doppelplants like Doppelwarrior, Dandylion and so on. There are a lot of cards out there that Chain Disappearance hurts and can even shut down a few decks as I mentioned before. Chain Disappearance is also an almost absolute shut down for Frognarch decks and any Frog variant decks as their decks rely on cards like Swap Frog, Treeborn Frog and Ronintoadin whom all have 1000 or less ATK. Infernities also have a few important targets that you can remove from play with Chain Disappearance as well. Namely Infernity Necromancer, Infernity Avenger and Infernity Mirage. A lot of decks depend on monsters like these with very low ATK which makes Chain Disappearance a Side Deck card that you will probably already be seeing a lot of, especially if you are playing any of the above decks that I have mentioned.


Our last card that we will be looking at is Cyber Dragon. This card is very useful in either the Main Deck or the Side Deck, depending on what you are running. However if you aren't running a Machine based deck like Gadgets, Machina Gadgets or Karakuri's, then you may want to consider siding Cyber Dragon. Most decks these days have a single, or even a pair of Chimeratech Fortress Dragon in their Extra Deck just for those off chances that a Cyber Dragon comes into play while Machines are on the field. Adding your own Cyber Dragons into your Main Deck when you decide to side in is always a good choice if you're facing anything Machine based. Getting rid of one of their monsters for free is always a good thing is it not? Cyber Dragon also doesn't need to be used against just Machine based decks though. Cyber Dragon's 2100 ATK is great for those random match ups against Naturia since most Naturia decks base themselves around Naturia Bamboo Shoot who unfortunately is stuck with only 2000 ATK, making it fairly easy to run over with Cyber Dragon unless the opponent has a decent amount of back up to protect their Naturia Bamboo Shoot. Cyber Dragon is also useful against Gravekeeper's. If they can't get their Necrovalley out fast enough none of their monsters can match up to it. However their Gravekeeper's Descendants will make fast work of your Cyber Dragon if you don't watch out. This is why I would recommend siding in both Cyber Dragon and Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror against Gravekeeper's, because then it becomes harder for them to get over Cyber Dragon and they would most likely be forced to summon a juiced up Gravekeeper's Commandant to suicide with it. Gladiator Beast's also have a hard time dealing with Cyber Dragon. If they are not allowed to put up more than 1 Gladiator Beast, they will be unable to summon Gladiator Beast Gyzarus, Gladiator Beast Murmillo or Gladiator Beast Essedarii to run over the Cyber Dragon. As long as your deck can keep them from summoning more than 1 Gladiator Beast or allowing them to bring out Murmillo, Cyber Dragon will be a major hassle for Gladiator Beast players. Aside from being a great card to side in against Gravekeeper's, Naturia's, Gladiator Beast's and any Machine based deck, it's also a free Level 5 monster so using any Tuner monsters means an easy Level 6 through 8 Synchro Monster depending on whichever Tuner monster you may currently have in your possession. Cyber Dragon is an excellent card and will take you far if you use it wisely.

That's all for today, I could go on and continue to tell you cards you could Side Deck but where would the fun in that be? These are just cards players should consider using if they are not already doing so, there are many more cards out there that would make excellent Side Deck material as well. So think long and hard about what you may face at the North American WCQ, your Side Deck is a very key part of many players winning at these events. To all of you going to the WCQ this year good luck, I will see you all there!

Introduction
Think back to August of 2008 when the first Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds Starter Deck was released, bringing in the era of Synchro Monsters. Well folks it seems we're going to go through this yet again with the introduction of the "Xyz" Monsters, better known as Exceed Monsters in the Japanese Trading Card Game. Xyz Monsters are very similar to Synchro Monsters but in some cases are even better, mainly for the fact that they do not require tuner monsters. That's right, Xyz Monsters do not require anything more than the appropriate monsters to "overlay". Also Xyz Monsters are pronounced as ik-seez.

What are Xyz monsters?
You can identify Xyz Monsters by simply looking at the card. Xyz Monsters are pitch-black colored cards, much like the DARK Synchro Monsters in the anime used by the Dark Signers. Their levels are on the left side of the card rather than on the right like every other monster in the game, however their level is no longer called levels. An Xyz Monsters level is actually called their "Rank". This means cards such as Gravity Bind, Level Limit - Area B and any other card that affects a monsters "level" will not affect your Xyz Monsters. Xyz Monsters also do not require any adjustments to be made to your deck as you do not need Tuner Monsters to summon them. Isn't that useful?

How do I perform an Xyz Summon?
To perform an Xyz Summon you have to "overlay" your material monsters instead of sending them to the Graveyard. This is similar to card games such as Pokemon, where they overlay their basic Pokemon with an evolution Pokemon card such as overlaying a Charizard card over a Charmeleon card to perform its evolution. The same goes for an Xyz Summon, however most require certain level monsters. Take for example Yuma's ace Xyz Monster Number 39: Utopia which will be in this years Starter Deck.


Utopia is a Rank 4 Xyz Monster. To Xyz Summon it's very similar to a Synchro Summon, needing certain levels to make your new monster. In Utopia's case he needs 2 Level 4 monsters. That is all, simply any 2 Level 4 monsters to overlay and you can bring out Utopia. There's also sort of a catch when it comes to Xyz Monsters. Because their levels are considered Ranks and not levels you can not use an Xyz Monster as a material monster for another Xyz Monster so keep this in mind.

What can't I do with Xyz Monsters and Xyz Summons?
• You may not use Token Monsters for Xyz Materials.
• Reborn Tengu will not get its effect if used for an Xyz Summon or sent to the Graveyard for an Xyz Monster's effect that requires detaching a Xyz Material Monster.
• You may not use Xyz Monsters as Synchro Material Monsters as their levels are considered Ranks.

Currently this is all you really need to know about Xyz Monsters. Be sure to look out for the 2011 Yu-Gi-Oh! Starter Deck: Dawn of the Xyz which will likely include more info on Xyz Monsters and clarify rulings regarding the Xyz Monsters. Also keep an eye open for Generation Force, the new set scheduled for release on August 18th which will contain many new Xyz Monsters and much much more!