New York Comic Con News: At NYCC, Konami Digital Entertainment was showcasing upcoming Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG products. ICv2 spoke with Konami  Senior Vice President, Card Business Yumi Hoashi to learn more about the Breakers of Shadow Booster and other upcoming releases.

“On November 13, we’ll be coming out with the Yugi’s Legendary Decks,” Hoashi said. “It’s a box set item, kind of like our holiday item for the year.”  

In addition to the three 41-card decks (see “The Ultimate Duelist's Decks Come to 'Yu-Gi-Oh!'”), there are 10 variant cards, including an Ultra Rare token card of Yugi (pictured here). It also contains three Secret Rares which have never been printed before (see gallery below). “And then there’s three of what we call historical cards that were shown on the TV series but have never been made into cards before.  So it’s a first for that,” Hoashi shared. “Then there are the original Egyptian god cards that are unplayable but were released way back when.”

Yugi’s Legendary Decks will be followed by Clash of Rebellions Special Edition (see “'Yu-Gi-Oh!: Clash of Rebellions Special Edition'”) in December.  “We’re a little late in coming out with the Clash of Rebellion Special Edition. We usually release it about six weeks after the core booster releases,” Hoashi said. “We’re going back to the special edition format. There’s two Super Rare variant cards. One of the cards is one of two variant cards that were promo cards such as the Shonen Jump cards which we used to do about three years ago. One of the other cards is a preview card from the upcoming Breakers of Shadow set.”

Breakers of Shadow is the first core booster set of 2016 (see “'Yu-Gi-Oh! Breakers of Shadow' Booster Introduces New Configuration”).  “This is the first booster set where we increased the drop ratio of the Foil cards -there’s a Foil card in every single pack,” Hoashi said. “This is a change that we’re making with Breakers of Shadow and moving forward as well.  The Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game is always evolving and the game play environment is always changing and so we thought it was about time that we made a change.  The last change we made was back in 2010 when we increased the drop ratio of the Secret Rares, and this time we’re increasing the drop ratio of all of the Foil cards.“

The Breakers of Shadow Booster will add a lot of generically powerful cards that can go into any deck.  “But we also have the Kozmo theme, which is first released with Clash of Rebellions,” Hoashi shared. “The Kozmo theme is a world premiere; it’s only available in the U.S. and European markets. There’s five Kozmo cards in Breakers of Shadow, so that will play well with Clash of Rebellion as well as Dimension of Chaos.”

“The Buster Blader theme, which is first being reintroduced in Yugi’s Legendary Decks, is also being powered up in Breakers of Shadow. So it will also appeal to the classic fans as well. It will also work well with the Master of Pendulum Structure Deck, because there are some good Magician Pendulum Monsters in Breakers of Shadow.”

The recently-announced Emperor of Darkness Structure Deck was also on display (see “Ancient Monarchs Return to Rule in New 'Yu-Gi-Oh! Structure Deck'”). “It’s a pre-constructed deck and it’s loosely tied to The Dark Emperor Structure Deck that we released in 2007. It’s the same type of theme, it’s a Monarch Deck,” Hoashi said. “It’s based around Tribute Summon Monarch monsters and the cards are made to be strong enough to let Tribute Summoning compete with the many Special Summoning, techniques that we’ve introduced through the years. So although it goes back to 2007, it’s on the same power level as the existing themes that we have out right now.”

Konami was also showing off the upcoming super-deformed Chibi Card Sleeves (see gallery below). The 50-sleeve set will release on February 12. MSRP is $3.99