In competitive Yu-Gi-Oh, it doesn’t get more exciting than summoning Exodia. Unless you do it twice that is.
Competition Yu-Gi-Oh is a serious business and requires a lot of training. So much so that one player repeatedly “rented” a girl to practice against. If you want to pull off the win at events, you need to pull out all the stops I guess.
The Yu-Gi-Oh Championship Series (YCS) is currently underway and the best duelists from North and South America are facing off for a massive prize. The top 32 players will earn invites to a World Championship Qualifier.
One player has clinched a win in the most spectacular way imaginable and thanks to Twitch streamer JoshuaSchmidtYGO, we can savor the moment for all time. Darling of the scene Jeff Leonard has summoned Exodia twice in a single match for a near-impossible victory.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “Doesn’t Exodia win you the game instantly?” and you are correct in your assumption. Semantically though, a match in the competitive Yu-Gi-Oh format consists of three duels and Leonard pulled off the summon in two out of three.
Summoning Exodia is a hard enough feat to pull off in a single duel but to do it twice in quick succession is almost unheard of. The reason is that you need to have all five pieces of Exodia split across five cards to do so.
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Only with the Right and Left Arm of Exodia, The Right and Left Leg of Exodia, and finally, the Head of Exodia can you summon the iconic Duel Monster. The best way to increase your chances is to have multiples of each limb in your deck but there’s more.
Pulling this off requires a strategy called burning in which you cycle cards repeatedly through sacrifices and drawing. This can be done using Monsters with effects that allow drawing and Spell cards. Unfortunately Pot of Greed is banned in competitive play.
The crowd reaction at the YCS Indianapolis event where Leonard pulled off this epic victory was insane for a TCG tournament. A chorus of cheers and chants came from the live crowd while a flood of Ws came from the chat on stream.
The YCS has one more event left in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. It takes place on October 28-29, 2023 and those keen on watching can catch the stream on the official OfficialYuGiOhTCG Twitch channel.