As with all trading card games, Yu-Gi-Oh releases multiple different sets every year. Each set has different cards that provide different strategies for duelists and oftentimes introduce new archetypes.
But people can get swamped looking for what new sets are coming up, and what they should buy. That’s where we come in, helping you to decide what you need to purchase.
Amazing Defenders – January 19th
The first few entries on this list have already released, but it’s important for posterity to mention them, so here we go! Amazing Defenders introduced the Mikanko, Purely and Rescue-ACE archetypes, along with reprints of older cards.
While none of these made an impact at the time, Purely has appeared as a meta threat not only in the OCG, but also in the TCG, so this is a set that’ll age even better with time, especially with the oncoming spectre of the banlist.
This set is made up of sixty cards. That’s ten Ultra Rare cards, fifteen Super Rares and thirty five rare cards.
Photon Hypernova – February 9th
Photon Hypernova is the first core set of 2023, and comes with a lot of important cards.The most important cards in the set all belong to the Kashtira archetype, an incredibly powerful archetype that locks your opponent of using their zones to play any cards.
With the support released in this set, Kashtira rocketed from an already powerful deck to a tier one meta threat, and has kept it in contention for best deck of the year ever since. In addition to these cards, support was printed for Bystial, Galaxy and several new cards designed for the Branded archetype.
Photon Hypernova consisted of 100 cards, with fifty Common Cards, twenty-six Super Rares, fourteen Ultra Rares and ten Secret Rares.
Beware Of Traptrix – February 23rd
Unlike the other entries on this list, this structure deck isn’t made up of packs. It’s made up of 46 cards, all of which can be put together to make a playable deck out of the pack.
There’s even eight entirely new cards printed in the set intended to make your Traptrix deck a lot more consistent, and there’s reprints of older cards that are absolutely essential to any good Traptrix strategy.
This means you can expect to see powerful cards like Traptrix Rafflesia, Traptrix Sera, Trap Trick and Evenly Matched alongside new cards such as Traptrix Pudica, which will add to your hand Traptrip Garden, a powerful new Traptrix field spell that allows you to normal summon twice per turn.
Maze Of Memories – March 9th
Maze of Memories didn’t do much to shift the overall archetype, but it did add support for a widely-mocked archetype in Gate Guardian. This new support allows Gate Guardian to actually do something, rather than what it used to do, which was absolutely nothing at all. There’s three fusion monsters that can be contact fused using materials in your hand, field, or graveyard, and you can now add the gate guardian pieces to your spell/trap zone to make summoning these fusion monsters even easier.
This set contains 67 cards, and focuses heavily on the past of Yu-Gi-Oh in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary year that’s currently ongoing.
Speed Duel GX: Duelists of Shadows – March 30th
Onto a different type of Yu-Gi-Oh, Speed Duel’s are games of Yu-Gi-Oh that are intended to be played in around ten minutes, just like the Speed Duel GX: Duelists of Shadows set.
There’s skill cards to customize the decks and make everything that much more fun too. Each deck in this set is based around characters from the anime with the following characters represented:
- The Supreme King
- The Vampire Camula
- Amazonian Warrior Tania
- Titan the Shadow Duelist
- Amnael The Alchemist
- The Spectral Nightshroud
- Duelist Adrian Gecko
- Shadow Rider Kagemaru
With eight pre-constructed decks, you’ll have a wide range of variety when it comes to choosing what you want to play.
There’s even eight secret rares, with three of those cards guaranteed to be the three Sacred Beasts: Uria, Lord of Searing Flames, Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder and Raviel, Lord of Phantasms.
These sets aren’t released on a consistent schedule like other TCG products, so it’s worth picking one of these up if you have any interest in speed duels at all.
Legendary Collection: 25th Anniversary Edition – April 20th
Legendary Collection: 25th Anniversary Edition is designed specifically to celebrate the quarter century anniversary of Yu-Gi-Oh. There’s six booster packs, six ultra rare cards and a 7th card printed in a brand new rarity called the Quarter Century Secret Rare.
The six rare cards include the three Egyptian god cards, and the Quarter Century Secret Rare will be one of six random Ultra Rares.
A Quarter Century Secret Rare is a new rarity that is being introduced this year to celebrate 25 years since the first Yu-Gi-Oh pack, Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon, released.
It’ll only be available this year, and will likely cost a small fortune after the end of the sales period.
In terms of which packs are available in this set, you get a booster pack from six of the earliest printed Yu-Gi-Oh sets available. That means you get a booster pack of the following:
- Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon
- Metal Raiders
- Spell Rulers
- Dark Crisis
- Pharaoh’s Servant
- Invasion of Chaos
Cyberstorm Access – May 4th
Cyberstorm Access is the second main booster set ro release this year, and comes with a brand new Firewall Dragon, which is the cover monster of the set.
This new version of one of the most broken Link monsters in the history of Yu-Gi-Oh is a Link-6, which means it’s rather difficult to make, but to make it worthwhile it has a whole host of powerful effects.
Oh, and with new Superheavy Samurai support in this set that archetype gets a whole lot better, which has affected the OCG meta quite a lot.
There’s also a new Purrely monster, new Rescue-ACE support and new Mikano support in this 100-card set, along with a new Gold Pride card to make your deck even better. There are ten Secret Rare cards, fourteen Ultra Rares, 26 Super Rares and fifty Commons,
Wild Survivors – June 2nd
Wild Survivors is a 60-card set that is a deck-building set. What this means is that all of the cards printed within this set can boost already existing decks. There’s new Dinosaur type monsters, new ritual monsters and new fighter monsters printed within this set in order to make your decks that much better.
Rarities in this set are also pretty great, with 35 Rares, 15 Super R ares and 10 Ultra Rares meaning that not a single card you pull will be a Common printing.
Battle of Legend: Monstrous Revenge – June 21st
Battle of Legends: Monstrous Revenge is the first booster set to feature Quarter Century Secret Rares, and will feature new cards as well as reprints of older cards in a brand new rarity.
This set includes 102 cards (40 Secret Rares and 62 Ultra Rares, along with 24 Quarter Century Secret Rare printints of already existing cards).
Not a ton has been announced about this set as of yet, but more information should be coming pretty soon, especially since the set is due to launch in less than a month from now.
For rarity hunters, this is one of the sets that you should absolutely grab, since there’s nothing lower than an Ultra Rare printing, and you’re always going to get a secret rare printing.
25th Anniversary Booster Set Reprints – July 12th
These reprints are the packs that were printed in the 25th Anniversary box set, and include cards from Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Metal Raiders, Spell Rulers, Pharaoh’s Servant and Invasion of Chaos.
While these cards aren’t going to warp the meta in the modern game, they’re a cool thing to see as an element of nostalgia.
Plus, cards such as Raigeki ARE still played in modern games, so they’re worth it, especially if you like the design of some of the most expensive Yugioh cards of all time.
Duelist Nexus – 28th July
Duelist Nexus is a core set that has support for (breathe in):
- Altergeist
- Charmer
- Dark World
- Drytron
- Evolsaur
- Evolution Pill
- Evolzar
- Fusion
- Mannadium
- Mikanko
- Nemleria
- Noble Arms
- Noble Knight
- Phantom Beast
- Polymerization
- Power Tool
- Purrely
- Roland
- Runick
- Synchron
- Trap Hole
- Unchained
- Unchained Soul
- Ursatic
- Vaylantz
If the support for dozens upon dozens of archetypes wasn’t enough, then there’s one other major addition that Duelist Nexus has. The set introduces the first new monster type in a long time in the form of the Illusion type, which opens up a whole new strategy for a whole new type of gameplay.
The set has 1 Quarter Century Secret Rare, 10 Secret Rares, 14 Ultra Rares, 26 Super Rares, 49 Commons. Overall there’s 100 different cards printed within this set for different archetypes.
Legendary Duelists: Soulburning Volcano – 11th August
Legendary Duelists: Soulburning Volcano is currently the final TCG set on the schedule for 2023, though it’s absolutely not going to be the last one released.
This TCG set is a deck-building set that includes support for Battlin Boxer, Salamangreat and Volcanic. Volcanic especially has been waiting for support for a long time now, so this will come as quite the pleasant surprise to certain members of the Yu-Gi-Oh community.
There are 62 total cards in this set, with 1 Ghost Rare, 9 Ultra Rares, 8 Super Rares, 10 Rares and 34 Commons.
