Cross Duel looks like Yu-Gi-Oh!’s four-player, digital answer to MTG’s Commander
Stay in your lane.
Get the entire Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG playgroup involved in a single match with the upcoming digital app, Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel, which will support three different modes and 3D monster models when it drops on September 6th.
Announced earlier this week by publisher Konami, Cross Duel will be available on both the iOS and Google app marketplaces as a free-to-play game. In lieu of conventional one-on-one duels, this new model pits four players against one another where the position of summoned monsters matters quite a bit.
Each player will have two rows of three slots for playing cards, and those summoned monsters will follow specific paths on their way to chew through an opponent’s life points. The leftmost is connected to the player on their left, and the right travels to a similar position on the other end of the cross. The middle slot connects to the opponent seated directly in front of them.
Players can spend their turn chuting monsters down the same path, but that might leave them open to attacks from other players. The press release explicitly mentioned forming and breaking temporary alliances, which makes Cross Duel sound an awful lot like the political metagaming at the heart of many Magic: The Gathering Commander matches.
Players can also team up against a single, colossally powerful monster in the middle of the cross, banding together to attack and defend against the shared threat. There will also be a dedicated single player mode with AI opponents and a storyline involving characters from several of the franchise’s anime arcs.
One of the more interesting uses of the digital app is the ability to create a tournament room that can hold up to 32 players, allowing friends to work their way up the ranks in your own social event. The cards themselves will all have 3D models that appear once summoned, and some of the rarer monsters will smash onto the battlefield with their own short introductory cinematic.
Though cross duel will borrow the premium gem currency and card pulling systems from Master Duel - which supports more traditional Yu-Gi-Oh! play - it seems as though the collections between the two won’t be shared. This might be due to a card customisation system, which allows players to unlock skills that can boost stats, give them summon abilities and other modifiers.
Pre-registration for Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel is currently open ahead of the global release on September 6th. More information about the digital game can be found on its official website, but if you’re interested in learning more about Master Duel - which Matt called one of the best avenues for getting started with the trading card game - Dicebreaker has plenty of great entry points.