WE all know the main reason most people go to a Yu-Gi-Oh Sneak Peek.

You want the chase card.

Either pull the Heavymetalfoes Electrumite or Saryuja Skull Dread with a bit of luck or a lot of wallet work after the event, but by and large there’s nothing further to the normal Sneak Peek player’s mindset.

Considering I wrote a 1000 words on why I love Superheavy Samurai… it’s safe to say I’m abnormal when it comes to this game.

I really enjoy Sneak Peek day and especially love the Sneak Peek tournament itself. This was a day I enjoyed for one reason alone when I first re-entered the game – I could compete. In Australia at my locals – shout out to General Games Frankston – we play the draft tournament format for each Sneak Peek.

This is my favourite format and it opens the doors to beginners and budget players to have a crack at the win. It might not mean as much as the regular weekly tournament and the howls of “I don’t like luck-based formats” constantly scream out… but at the end of the day it’s a change of pace and entertaining to boot.

It was a forum that a smart player with a bit of luck could compete against the richest players and those smart enough to follow the metagame with the strong decks and even stronger collections. Even though it’s a coin flip day in a lot of ways, I always love the randomness of the deck you create and the things you need to know to excel in that tournament.

It was fun to give something different a try and see people who would stomp me week-in, week-out with Metalfoes and Zoodiac have to read the cards and try to beat me on level (or level-ish) terms. While I’ve moved out of that ‘dirt-poor’ mentality, I’m still at heart a Sneak Peek enthusiast and someone who just wants to play the new cards.

Drafting Smart

Think about the best cards of the last few Sneak Peek tournaments. Rare Mekk-Knights, Krawlers and my absolute favourite… Metaltron XII, the True Dracombatant, they all were truly almighty on their day. These weren’t the best cards of the set by any stretch but they were useful in that context. They had simple effects or sometimes no effect at all. It’s a day of simplified matches so you need to build your deck accordingly.

Caveman Yu-Gi-Oh Is Your Friend

If you don’t remember the halcyon days of Yu-Gi-Oh’s beginning, let me fill you in on those simpler times. Big monsters would smack about smaller monsters and the spell/traps would augment that strategy. We subsisted off Gemini Elf and Mechanicalchaser for years after all; it was a game of 1-for-1 trade-offs and protecting your strongest monsters. There is absolutely no difference between that era and the Sneak Peek format. You get limited resources and for the most part, no archetypical support or strategy. So when there’s no strategy you need to just plough ahead and smack around the competition.

The best cards of Flames of Destruction will include the beat-down centric cards. Mekk-Knight Avram is a 2000 beatstick. The rest of the set will struggle to stop it.

While we won’t know the variety and form of the Vendread and OCG imports until the week or so before the set releasing, at least we know what’s good in the Japanese set. Each of the Troymares/Knightmares will be a tank upon summon. Elementsaber Willard is solid and there are plenty of decent four-star monsters about that you can trawl through your opponent’s

This applies to the Structure deck tournaments that have been introduced as of late as well. Sacred Arch-Airknight Parshath was a beatstick-and-a-half that loved to be Special Summoned for little effort. Tri-Gate Wizard and Beast King Barbaros swung their might around the Link Strike tournament and so on so forth. Get them big, get them powerful and go wham on the day.

Big is also just as important on defence. Boycotton has 2500 defence on a level four monster. It’s not the best card going around but defence is defence after all. You have to make do with the options at your disposal after all. Defence never hurts in a simple format.

Read The Commons

It really needs to be said again – read the commons and read them well. You will get 35 of them after all; they’re the majority of your deck on the day so you need to figure out the best ones fast. Speedroid Skull Marbles saw play for one day competitively at our shop but wasn’t that a magical day at the Maximum Crisis Sneak Peek.

The commons are very random so make sure you take the time to read them properly.

Yajirovader will trip people up. Just read this effect.

Yajirovader Reptile / Effect Level 5 ATK / DEF 2200 / 0. “If this card is Normal or Special Summoned to a Main Monster Zone other than the middle one, destroy this card. Once per turn: You can move this card to an adjacent unused Main Monster Zone. Each time exactly 1 monster is Normal or Special Summoned to your opponent’s field: If that opponent’s monster is currently not in this card’s column, move this card to the adjacent Main Monster Zone closer to that opponent’s monster’s column, then destroy all other cards in the column this card was moved in.”

Cheap and simple destruction in a format where destruction effects are limited. It might not do anything after the FLOD Sneak Peek but it doesn’t have to. There will be plenty of tributes available and plenty of random defence walls waiting for

Never Let Yourself Deck Out

This is a format designed for decking out. I won my only match at the Extreme Force Sneak Peek because of the 3k defence of Mekk-Knight Orange Sunset. You only have to run 20 but unless you have 26 completely unusable cards you are best served playing 24-26 to avoid the earlier deck out.

It will win games – they won’t be fun to play but sitting on a wall and letting the turns tick by is valid in a simplified format like the Sneak Peek.

There might not be much on the line at the Sneak Peek but there’s no reason to go through the tournament without considering your deck choices and giving the draft format a fair chance. You never know what you can do with 46 random cards.