Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel’s first in-game event Xyz Festival kicks off next week
It’s pronounced “ex-seez”.
The first in-game event for Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel begins next week, the TCG’s maker Konami has announced.
As the name suggests, the Xyz Festival will focus on monsters brought onto the field using Xyz summoning, where two monsters of the same level are used as materials to summon an Xyz monster of the same rank from your Extra Deck.
Master Duel’s Xyz Festival will kick off on Thursday February 16th at 11:30pm PST (that’s 7:30am GMT on Friday February 17th for us here in the UK), and will limit participants to using exclusively Xyz monsters in their Extra Deck.
Players will earn medals just by taking part in the Xyz Festival; you don’t need to win a duel to collect a medal, but surrendering before the end of the match will see you miss out on the reward.
Building your own custom deck will net you double the number of medals, encouraging players to create their own deck versus using a pre-built or structure deck. (Of course, you’ll still have to abide by the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! banlist when making your deck.)
The Xyz Festival will run for one week until 9pm PST on Wednesday February 23rd (or 5am GMT on February 24th). Players will then have until February 26th to claim rewards using their collected medals, with the goodies on offer yet to be announced.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel saw a surprise release on PC and consoles last month, before seeing a wide mobile launch in early February. The free-to-play app has since been downloaded more than 10 million times, briefly overtaking the likes of Apex Legends and Grand Theft Auto V in terms of concurrent players on Steam.
My own time with Master Duel finally helped me to understand how to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, making it the most accessible I’ve ever found the long-running card game’s previously intimidating ruleset and litany of summoning techniques. If nothing else, I now know how to pronounce Xyz (it’s “ex-seez”).