Highlights
- A skilled Yu-Gi-Oh player won a tournament match with Exodia, a rare and powerful monster that grants instant victory when all five designated cards are gathered.
- Most players find it difficult to use Exodia due to the challenge of collecting all the necessary cards, but player Jeffrey Leonard managed to do so with an Exodia Dracoslayer FTK deck.
- Leonard's victory against former champion Justin Singh using Exodia was celebrated as an impressive feat in the Yu-Gi-Oh community, even though he did not place well overall in the tournament.
In a surprising move seemingly pulled from the anime, a skilled Yu-Gi-Oh player recently won a tournament match by summoning the unstoppable Exodia. The Yu-Gi-Oh card game is still enjoyed by many around the world, either in its physical form or through one of the many Yu-Gi-Oh video games released over the years. Based on the equally popular manga and anime from the late artist Kazuki Takahashi, Yu-Gi-Oh pits duelists against each other in a bid to deplete their Life Points using many different monsters, spells, and traps. These various Yu-Gi-Oh cards are paired together into different decks and strategies, many of which are centered around a particular monster.
One of the most popular Yu-Gi-Oh monsters is Exodia the Forbidden One, a hulking beast that is summoned by gathering all five of its designated cards in a single hand and grants its owner an instant victory. Yugi Muto famously used Exodia to defeat Seto Kaiba in the very first episode of the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, but players in real life have found it quite difficult to draw all five of the necessary Exodia pieces, even while playing with a deck centered around doing so. As a result, decks centered around Exodia or similar “instant win” card sets are used rarely in the competitive Yu-Gi-Oh scene.
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This isn’t always the case though, as Yu-Gi-Oh player Jeffrey Leonard recently pulled off an incredible series of wins with Exodia during last weekend’s Yu-Gi-Oh Championship Series (YCS) Indianapolis 2023 event. As reported by IGN, Leonard entered the tournament with an Exodia Dracoslayer FTK (First Turn Kill) deck, which is centered around summoning the Forbidden One in one turn. Despite the inherent disadvantages of this type of deck, Leonard was able to pull off an impressive 3-0 winning streak, which led to his upset victory against former Yu-Gi-Oh TCG champion Justin Singh in the fourth round of the tournament.
The match between Leonard and Singh was a best-of-three contest, with the former having his work cut out for him due to Singh’s Tier-1 Tearlament Yu-Gi-Oh deck. During the first round, Leonard managed to gather the necessary pieces in one turn. Round Two saw Leonard concede, and he fell short of the needed Exodia cards on his initial Round Three turn. Luckily for him, Singh didn’t have any plays to make and handed the turn to Leonard, who proceeded to use the effect of Blue Dragon Summoner to draw the needed Exodia cards and win to the roar of the crowd.
Word of Jeffrey Leonard’s win soon spread across social media, with some players even calling it one of the greatest Yu-Gi-Oh stream moments of all time. Unfortunately, Leonard’s winning streak soon came to an end, and he ultimately placed 591st out of the 1,957 players who entered the YCS Indianapolis 2023 tournament.
This doesn’t take away from Leonard’s impressive victory against Justin Singh using the Exodia Dracoslayer FTK deck, which even he admits is mostly played for the fun of summoning Exodia rather than winning tournaments. Win Leonard did though, managing to unleash the full might of the Forbidden One on his opponent just like Yugi did in his initial duel against Kaiba in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime. Jeffrey Leonard is already a popular member of the Yu-Gi-Oh card gaming community, and his big moment in Indianapolis will likely be talked about for a long time.
